Facebook has a fundamental characteristic that has proven key to its appeal in country after country—you only see friends there.

—David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect1

We are still coming to grips with the role that Facebook plays in American democracy.

—Brendan Nyhan, professor of political science, Dartmouth College²

We used to say that seeing is believing; now Googling is believing.

—Michael P. Lynch, philosopher³

The algorithms that orchestrate our ads are starting to orchestrate our lives.

—Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble⁴

I was trapped inside and didn't even know it. For a period of probably five or six years, I was partially blind and deluded, drifting about in a filter bubble of my own creation. It didn't cause me any major problems, but, looking back, it likely did have a slight negative impact on both my personal and professional lives. I had set up a system on my computer and smartphone that would spoon-fed me science news throughout the day, every day. If somebody discovered a new bat species in a rainforest somewhere, I was going to know about it. How can this not be a good thing? What could possibly go wrong? Over time, however, my catered diet of science news led me to develop what I now look back on and see as a distorted, unrealistic view of the society around me. I came to assume that everyone was keeping up with science news and was aware of all of the latest discoveries and advancements. After years of one awkward encounter after another with people who hadn't heard anything about the new exoplanet just found or the latest hominin fossil pulled from the Earth in Africa, it slowly dawned on me that I was projecting my personal information intake onto others. I was living inside a science news filter bubble and thought everyone was in there with me, when, of course, they weren't.

WHAT IS A “FILTER BUBBLE”?

Filter bubbles are personal online zones of customized news, entertainment, and social media posts; tailored search results; targeted ads; and so on that can be so specific and consistent to an individual that the flow of this information places the recipient at a risk of developing a distorted worldview on one or many issues. Opposing viewpoints, contrary arguments, as well as random and novel ideas can become rare or nonexistent inside a filter bubble. Algorithms serve up whatever information is deemed most likely to make you happy and content—reality and your personal growth be damned. Remember, social media platforms are hell-bent on keeping you engaged often and for as long as possible. There just isn't a lot of priority given to helping you become well-rounded and worldly. Filter bubbles help keep users feeling good, self-assured, and stuck to these sites and apps. Political activist Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble, is credited with coming up with the name that is now in wide use.5 Some refer to this problem as being in an echo chamber or silo. Whatever you call it, don't allow yourself to become lost in them unaware.

Thanks to my daily diet of science news, my subconscious mind had drifted to the assumption that everyone was diligent about staying on top of science news, just like me. But, of course, relatively few people do. I can remember many times feeling confused as to why the smart, educated person I was having a conversation with wasn't aware of some fascinating science news that I brought up. As far as my work, I am sure that I wrote some news articles and commentary pieces that were not as good as they could have been if I had not been operating under the assumption that everyone knew at least something about some science idea, fact, or discovery. The solution to my problem was not to stop paying attention to science news, of course, but to adjust my awareness and keep in mind that most people were not inside this particular filter bubble with me. Since then, I try to avoid launching into conversations with people under the blind assumption that they are avid science fans, too. I haven't stopped bringing up science news with just about anyone, anytime, and anywhere; I just try to be more sensible about it.

That simple lesson of my own filter bubble experience stuck with me. As political filter bubbles floated across the American landscape like hot-air balloons during the wild and raucous 2016 US presidential election season, I felt frustrated and sad for the minds entombed within them. People couldn't understand how the other side could be so wrong about so much when the news and facts were so plain and obvious. I knew that millions of people had no idea that their online activities had left them intellectually compromised, far more biased and myopic, than they otherwise would have been. Daniel J. Boorstin, the late historian and Librarian of the United States Congress, saw the potential problem of blind bias and irrational beliefs running amok long before the Internet and digital filter bubbles. He wrote this in 1961: “We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.”6

Filter bubbles are a significant problem now and could become much worse in the near future as algorithms become more sophisticated and ubiquitous. It is important for social media users to be aware of this challenge and take practical steps to counter it as best they can in their lives. To be clear, I am not anti-filter-bubble in a total sense. Filters can be good; and I will argue later in this chapter that certain kinds of filters are necessary for a life well lived. Furthermore, some bubbles can be useful, too, to a degree. The key is to consciously choose the right filters, inhabit the right bubbles (as best we can), and be aware that online information comes to us under the influence of someone else's bias or agenda. We also must accept the hard truth that it is virtually impossible to escape all filter bubbles all of the time. There simply is too much going on beyond our view to completely control the flow of information. The issues addressed in this chapter, filter bubbles and fake news, are serious challenges and raise an important question: Is social media a threat to social unity and democracy? You could make a strong case, for example, that Facebook is ripping the world apart, flinging us into ever-deeper echo chambers by playing to our subconscious desires and weaknesses. What a terrible irony it will be if one morning we all wake up to discover that we have connected online only to end up disconnected.

RISE OF THE ALGORITHMS

An algorithm is a collection of steps or procedures used to solve a mathematical or computer problem. Think of them as flowcharts put into high-tech action. Named after Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian mathematician who lived in the ninth century, today algorithms determine our customized search engine results and sort out all of the data harvested from us as we move around from website to website. They also help to create social media filter bubbles, working in conjunction with our own human biases that drive us to seek out the kinds of ideas, news, and people who confirm our beliefs and feed our hopes. Be aware of them because algorithms often determine our Internet and social media experiences.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, that all organisms are algorithms, humans included. We are, he explains,

an assemblage of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. Algorithmic calculations are not affected by the materials from which the calculator is built. Whether an abacus is made of wood, iron or plastic, two beads plus two beads equals four beads. Hence there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to replicate or surpass. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicone?7

Hacking Humanity

Harari suggests that twenty-first-century technology may “enable external algorithms to ‘hack humanity’ and know me far better than I know myself.” This, he writes, could lead to the end of belief in individualism and the total ascendance of algorithms:

People will no longer see themselves as autonomous beings running their lives according to their wishes, but instead will become accustomed to seeing themselves as a collection of bio-chemical mechanisms that is constantly monitored and guided by a network of electronic algorithms. For this to happen, there's no need for an external algorithm that knows me perfectly and never makes any mistake; it is enough that the algorithm will know me better than I know myself, and will make fewer mistakes than I do. It will then make sense to trust this algorithm with more and more of my decisions in life choices.8

The trend is clear, the momentum undeniable. We are running, full-speed, into an algorithmic future. More and more human activity will be aided, influenced, or determined by whatever an algorithm decides. The role of algorithms in human culture will be widespread, deep, and profound. Harari goes so far as to speculate that ultra-complex and ultra-capable algorithm networks could supplant traditional human belief systems.

“The new religions are unlikely to emerge from the caves of Afghanistan or from the madrasas of the Middle East,” he writes.

Rather they will emerge from research laboratories. Despite all the talk of radical Islam and Christian fundamentalism, the most interesting place in the world from a religious perspective is not the Islamic State or the Bible Belt, but Silicon Valley. That's where high-tech gurus are brewing for us brave new religions that have little to do with God, and everything to do with Technology. They promise all of the old prizes—happiness, peace, prosperity, and eternal life—but here on Earth with the help of technology, rather than after death with the help of celestial beings.⁹

There is a large proportion of the population living in what we would regard as an alternative reality.

—Stephan Lewandowsky, cognitive scientist, University of Bristol10

There are two major problems with filter bubbles. The first is that the individual Internet user is under continual refinement and categorization. It never stops. And it's only going to get worse in the immediate future. As algorithms improve and multiply, they are going to place us in ever-tightening, more confining bubbles. Sometimes their work is appreciated, of course. For example, I like it when Amazon recommends a great book, one that an algorithm decided I might like, based on my past purchases. But I don't necessarily want an algorithm to create distance between me and a few of my friends on social media simply because we have different tastes in books or music or movies. And by no means do I want an algorithm to shield me from reality or filter out facts because the goal of the coders who wrote it is to keep me happily surfing the Web, liking friends’ posts, watching videos, purchasing things, and shedding personal data at every stop.

Another significant problem with filter bubbles is that the creation and maintenance of them is a mystery to us. We, the typical people who use the Internet and social media, don't know and can't know for sure what is going on behind the scenes. All we know is that our online experiences are automatically sorted, categorized, and customized to “serve us.” Yes, conveniences and comfort may come with this kind of tailored online isolation, but consider the costs.

“In the filter bubble, there's less room for the chance encounters that bring insight and learning,” writes Pariser in Filter Bubble. “Creativity is often sparked by the collision of ideas from different disciplines and cultures…. By definition, a world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there's nothing to learn…. Personalization can lead you down a road to a kind of informational determinism in which what you've clicked on in the past determines what you see next—a Web history you're doomed to repeat. You can get stuck in a static, ever-narrowing version of yourself—and endless you-loop.”¹¹

To be fair, social media has no monopoly on bias and filtered presentations of knowledge and news. Just take one glance at cable news in the United States today. Those who rely heavily on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for their news might easily develop the belief that there is no world beyond America's borders. Or, if there is, nothing much happens there worth knowing about. Cable news presents a massively misleading view of the world. It is detrimental because the absence of information is a huge obstacle to sensible and productive decision making. While critics fixate on internal American political biases, left vs. right, of these media companies, no one seems to notice that they all share a common and more severe bias against basic reality.

Natasha, a Florida litigation attorney, sees a significant problem in filter bubbles, even as she is an enthusiastic user of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. She says that social media is her primary means of communication and an “integral part of life.”12 She loves having the ability to connect with people and keep track of friends and family members but dislikes how social media can sometimes “create a false sense of connection” with people. When it comes to the filter bubble problem, however, her frustration level soars:

This is a huge problem, because now, more than ever, someone can find extensive support—often completely baseless and unsupported—for whatever position they may choose to take. There is literally a community for every position. [But] I kind of like it because it allows me to research different positions, and that can be mind-blowing. For example, this guy I sat next to on a flight went into a long rant about the earth being flat, people not being ‘free,’ the earth being less than a thousand years old, etc., etc. I was blown away, and within minutes I found page after page [online] of people supporting these exact claims. Some people will hear something, look online, see social media posts or websites saying the same thing, do zero real research, and just run with it.

Some Facebook users understand how easy it is to end up in a filter bubble, through no fault of their own. “I think it's safe to say that the majority of people who use social media tend to follow or have followers who are similar in beliefs and viewpoints,” said Camille, a forty-year-old user of Facebook and Instagram.¹³ “So most people are in their own little vacuum online or the star of their personal reality show. What is really worrisome is how social networks like Facebook edit your timeline based off of past likes you may have made, thereby resulting in a watered-down timeline which then turns in to a very concentrated feed. So even if you're not trying to be in a bubble, the algorithms can give you a polarized view if you're not careful.”

John Michael Strubhart is a retired teacher living in Texas who spends two to three hours per day on social media, three-fourths of that on Facebook. “The filter bubble is definitely a thing,” he said.14 He continues,

I do have a filter bubble, but I know where its boundary is; and beyond that boundary, I do explore. For example, I actively oppose actions taken by the Trump administration, but I do look for reasoned arguments in support of some of the positions that the administration takes. I also look for what motivates Trump supporters. That information has to be sought outside my filter bubble. The trick at that point is to find reliable information and staying objective in assessment of that information. I haven't found anything that makes me change my objections, but I do gain insight into the reasons or motivations behind the stance of the Trump administration and its supporters. I'm not averse to calling bullshit on claims made within my circles, though…. My social media circle consists of people who have the same general values as I do, but I have plenty of friends and family members [within it] who don't share all of those values.

Angela Russell, aged thirty-three, is concerned about the filter bubble problem. “My husband and I talk about this all the time,” she said.¹⁵ “Both of us consider ourselves to be somewhere between liberal and conservative. But both of our Facebook feeds seem to be increasingly far left. I don't watch much live news. I have 4.5- and 6-year-old daughters, and it's hard to find the time. I worry that relying on Facebook to keep me posted on what is going on in the world is not the most effective strategy to keep my worldview well-rounded. With that being said, the news media has become so polarized and biased itself [that] sometimes that I wonder if there's any true way to be honestly informed.”

CONFIRMATION BIAS VS. THE QUEST FOR TRUTH

Once you start looking for confirmation bias you see it everywhere.

—Dean Eckles, social scientist and statistician16

There is a deeper reason why life inside a social media filter bubble feels cozy even though it can be problematic and deprive us of fuller, richer lives. Confirmation bias is a natural and standard process of the human subconscious mind. It's always on, working to keep us feeling smart and rational, even as it builds unrealistic, sometimes bizarre fantasy worlds inside our heads. We all have this bias, but few of us realize just how relentless and influential it can be in its mission to support or confirm our observations, conclusions, and beliefs. It is the reason we so often see someone blatantly ignore or sidestep powerful evidence and logic when these things conflict with the person's previously held belief. Many committed creationists who believe the Earth is less than ten thousand years old demonstrate this every time they overlook, ignore, or reject the immense accumulated scientific evidence that reveals an Earth that is billions of years old. This is a cognitive process that people—you and me included—don't naturally recognize when it's happening. We believe ourselves to be consistently fair and honest when it comes to assessing the world around us. But we fail at it every day of our lives, in large part due to confirmation bias.

The tailor-made mini-worlds that confirmation bias helps to create can boost our self-esteem and make us feel profoundly confident about our beliefs, which is precisely the point. Cognitive dissonance, the mental conflict that happens when one belief collides with an opposing or contrary belief inside a human mind, doesn't feel good. It may bring on anxiety, confusion, perhaps even desperation. Confirmation bias works to prevent or put out those fires by pointing to the agreeable stuff while blinding us to challenging or contradictory information.

IGNORANCE ISN'T BLISS

Are you floating around inside a political filter bubble—one where your views and opinions are backed up by almost everything you see, read, and hear? If so, you need some help. Fortunately, there's an app for that. Launched in February 2017, Read Across the Aisle keeps track of the political news its users read throughout the day. If a user's news exposure for the day is heavy on one side, a meter will show this and the app will suggest that he or she explore some news over on the other side of the spectrum. The goal is to get more people exposed to opposing views and news coverage. As the app's founder, Nick Lum, said, “We can't just hunker down in our filter bubbles and hope that things get better. We have to take a step to get outside of our bubbles.”17

“Confirmation bias is the mother lode of cognitive biases,” declares Bo Bennet, author, teacher, and host of The Dr. Bo Show.¹⁸ In discussing this particular bias with me, he explains,

This is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. In this context, this affects what sources we go to for information. We like when reality agrees with us, not when it disagrees with us, so if we have a strong belief that lizard people are ruling the planet in secret, we might choose to get our news from such sources that promote this idea—and, yes, there are several. The confirmation bias also helps us to conveniently “forget” those facts that contradict our views, and at the same time, helps us to remember all the information that supports our views. Be committed to the truth, no matter what that truth may be. This will help mitigate this bias.¹⁹

A helpful way to come to terms with your confirmation bias is to see it for what it is: cheating. Plain and simple, this is cheating. You do it, I do it, everyone's subconscious mind is constantly prepared to behave dishonestly when it comes to observing, learning, and thinking. The human brain has no shame. It will, without hesitation, notice, fixate on, and remember every available scrap of information that confirms whatever assortment of good, bad, or wacky ideas it currently harbors. At the same time, the brain is no less diligent at ignoring, denying, and forgetting information that contradicts or challenges beliefs currently residing within the skull fortress. This is how horoscopes, for example, can impress so many people and solidify their belief in astrology. A typical fan of this popular pseudoscience is likely to forget the majority of horoscopes that fail to accurately predict the future and offer nothing specific and relevant to his or her life. Due to confirmation bias, however, the one or two horoscope that do happen to hit the mark to some degree will be valued and remembered.

Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and a longtime researcher of irrational beliefs and cognitive biases. Our hunger to verify what we believe, he concludes, is the beast within that we cannot afford to ignore: “The study of cognitive biases has revealed that humans are anything but the Enlightenment ideal of rational calculators carefully weighing the evidence for and against beliefs. And these biases are far reaching in their effects. A judge or jury assessing evidence against a defendant, a CEO evaluating information about a company, or a scientist weighing data in favor of a theory will undergo the same cognitive temptations to confirm what is already believed.”20

Confirmation bias is a clear and present danger to your ability to reason, make sound decisions, and maintain a sensible worldview while on social media. Know it. Respect its power to lead you astray. This is a problem that is thriving now in our digital, connected culture; but it's not new. Confirmation bias has been challenging us for a long time. English philosopher Francis Bacon wrote of it back in the sixteenth century:

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion…draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate…. And such is the way of all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, although this happened much oftener, neglect and pass them by.21

It alarms me that so many people are willing to believe first and ask questions later. I have discussed this at length with many people who carry around an extensive collection of extraordinary beliefs in their heads (astrology, psychics, bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, ghosts, ESP, alien abductions, and so on). They seem primed to believe at a glance, almost as if by thoughtless reflex. But most tell me that they only believe these things because it makes logical sense to, because there is ample evidence for them, and, in some cases, because personal experiences confirmed them. They present their state of belief as the sensible end result of their patient and careful consideration of good evidence, as if it would be irrational not to believe. I believe that they sincerely feel this way because that is exactly what confirmation bias leads to. It makes the unbelievable feel undeniable.

People who do not understand confirmation bias often end up in bad places where the most ludicrous beliefs seem sensible, proven, perhaps even inevitable and indisputable within their heads. It is crucial that you are aware of the cherry-picking tactics of a human mind and understand the lengths it will go to protect a belief. This is why it is so important that you do not go around casually accepting claims and believing claims simply because they feel good or seem to make sense at a glance. Once inside the mind, an idea can lay down roots and forever seem to the host to be correct and sensible, no matter how inaccurate or nonsensical it actually is. Respect this bias. It's powerful. It shapes your life. Once the subconscious mind begins its silent and endless process of editing your life experiences to protect and nurture it, a lie or a misperception may infect you for the rest of your days.

I anticipate that right about now some readers are thinking to themselves that they don't really need to worry much about confirmation bias, because they are too smart to allow themselves to be negatively impacted by it. Pardon me while I giggle at that misguided notion. One thing about confirmation bias that cannot be stressed enough is that everyone has it and everyone uses it. Counterintuitively, being highly intelligent and having an impressive education often makes you more vulnerable to the problem of confirmation bias rather than less vulnerable.

THE FILTER YOU WANT, THE BUBBLE YOU NEED

To live in a world like ours, filled to the brim with delusion and dishonesty, a filter is necessary. All who would make an effort to lean toward reality and appreciate truth must adopt and use the filter of good thinking. By applying skepticism, critical thinking skills, and the scientific method with force and consistency in daily life, we can filter out much of, if not most of, the nonsense and fraud that rain down on us every time we turn on a computer or look at our smartphone or walk out the front door. This is the filter of science and reason, an invaluable though not 100 percent reliable way of sidestepping cognitive blunders. Use it.

There is also one specific bubble I recommend inhabiting. Everyone should move into this one, immediately. Let's call it the Reality Bubble. This is a big one, spacious enough to contain everything that is real and true. This is where you want to be. Living in it doesn't mean you can't bring in fantasy, fiction, and wild dreams with you, only that those things are not to be passively mistaken for reality. And this filter bubble is a bit different than most because its walls are permeable. It allows in different opinions, weird claims, and evidence that doesn't match known reality—but only long enough to give them a fair hearing. If they can't hold up to a little scrutiny and skepticism, they are ejected or wither and die in the bright light of the Reality Bubble.

Social media enthusiast Sean Prophet of Los Angeles believes that critical thinking can pop any filter bubble that is sustained by ignorance and misinformation. He sounds to me like a proud resident of the Reality Bubble: “I don't care at all personally about filter bubbles,” he said.22 “I care about how people know what's true. I want to stay firmly locked in a fact bubble for as long as I live. I think filter bubbles are only a problem for people who don't know how to determine what's true. As such they are a threat to our democracy. They help keep ignorant people ignorant. But they do almost nothing to keep smart people from becoming smarter.”

Imagine someone with a fast and brilliant mind, an intellect well above average. She is very observant, notices detail better than most, and has a great memory to boot. Confirmation bias can flourish in such a mind. This is because she will notice, observe, and retain evidence at a higher rate than lesser minds. And—with confirmation bias unchecked—she will do all of this in a manner that supports her previously held beliefs and conclusions. I have observed, studied, met, and interviewed many conspiracy theory enthusiasts over the years, and a trait common to most of them is an active, hardworking mind. Unlike the typical casual believer in demons or jinn/genies, these people are much less passive and tend to invest significant effort into researching and confirming their pet conspiracy theories. Of course, what is unfortunate for them is that they do it with the confirmation bias in full effect.

HOW TO BEAT THE BIAS

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

—Robertson Davies, Temptest-Tost23

Now that we know the human cognition machine includes this stealthy bias dedicated to making us feel good and confident about our ideas and beliefs, what can we do about it? We can't responsibly ignore it and go about our lives, because this bias goes too far and our already tenuous relationship with reality suffers for it. Know going in that confirmation bias is difficult to combat and impossible to defeat. It operates in the dark, beneath our consciousness, so we are never fully aware of it. Only the fool believes confirmation bias cannot trick him or her into not only holding onto but also spreading and vigorously defending silly or dangerous beliefs. No one escapes this problem, so everyone should rise to the challenge and attempt to tame and counteract it as much as possible. Don't be a passive, self-made fool. Fight.

We can reduce confirmation bias by consciously steering our minds in new and different directions. Deny the instinct to duck and run from ideas and evidence that contradict your beliefs and cause you discomfort. Run toward them. Take them on. The goal is not to be loyal to a belief at all costs. The target is truth. Expose yourself to the other side of the tracks. Remember, your confirmation bias has been cheating every day, rain or shine. It never calls in sick. For years it has been working on your behalf, building a worldview for you that feels so right, so sensible, so unnecessary of challenge that you just might be sleepwalking when it comes to judging and assessing the accuracy of ideas and evidence that don't align well with what you believe. If you want to always at least dwell in the vicinity of truth, then you must be honest enough to be humble. Admit that you are not perfect. If you can do this, then it becomes less difficult to see that some of your beliefs, views, attitudes, and ideas may be wrong. From there, it's an easy step to giving thought and consideration to the answers you “know” to be wrong. Listen to your intellectual enemies. Separate claims, ideas, and evidence from the person delivering them to you. Maybe you have good reason to see that person as bad, repulsive, or untrustworthy, but so what? Their words may still contain some truth that will benefit you. Don't waste too much time, of course, but always consider the seemingly absurd. Give it a fair, if brief, hearing, because maybe the idea only seems farcical to you because of the big, bad confirmation bias in your mind.

Seek out, hear, and know the opposing viewpoint of as many issues as possible. I have done this for years out of respect for the power of confirmation bias, and it has become habit for me. For example, nearly every day I expose myself to some heavily biased news that feels in my gut like dishonest, vile propaganda that is opposed to almost everything I know to be true and feel to be good. I have social media connections with many people who, it seems, disagree with me about everything. So long as they don't send me death threats, I'm happy to have them in my life because their presence is reassurance that I'm working to keep my mind open. Not only do such people keep me on my toes, but they add to the richness of my existence as well. I seek out contact with those on the other side because I don't want to live in a comfortable but dull rut of constant reinforcement. I get enough cheerleading and backslapping for my views, so I seek out diversity, surprises, and intellectual challenges, too. It's not always easy to do, but I consistently make an effort to listen intently and with an open mind when a true believer tries to sell me on some claim that I already know a lot about and have judged previously to be spurious. I sometimes experience a minor psychological reward, a tingle of positive feelings, when doing this because I recognize that I'm trying. I'm making a real effort to be intellectually honest and fair, and that makes me feel good about where my mind is pointing. I want my own ideas, beliefs, and conclusions to be tested, because I know that some of them are almost certainly wrong. Should these supplements of awkward conversations and the consumption of overtly biased news help expose some bogus idea squatting inside my mind, then I become wiser and closer to reality. Assess your life, online and off-line. Do you have a network of friends who pretty much all think the same way about the same things? If so, not only is your life is not only duller than necessary, but also you are living in a confirmation bias paradise. Change your world. Dip your mind's toes into foreign waters, not occasionally but daily. If you are a conservative, fundamentalist Christian and all of your Facebook friends are as well, then you have built for yourself a make-believe world within which your confirmation bias is smothering some of your brain's potential for honest analysis and deep thinking. Virtually all of the comments and news articles you see on your newsfeed will reinforce what you already believe rather than challenge you to think in new ways. It is exposure to different ideas that inspires deep, reflective thinking. Without them, it is difficult to grow and improve as a human. If you are a liberal atheist and your social media networks are dominated by nonbelievers with views and motivations similar to yours, then you are not conducting your life as a worldly person, at least not online. You are no better than the stereotypical hick who refuses to leave his porch and explore what's out there. Why not just save the electricity? Turn off your computer and shout at the wall instead so that you can enjoy the pleasing sound of your echo?

Everyone on social media can benefit from networking with people who are not necessarily aligned with them on the usual laundry list of issues. A wimpy, vegan pacifist can be Facebook friends with a red-meat-eating, macho gun enthusiast. It's possible. Assuming both are reasonably civilized and respectful, two people with contradictory views on one or several issues have the potential to interact online with positive and beneficial results for both. Sure, they may never see eye-to-eye on diet or open-carry gun laws; but that's okay, at least by connecting and interacting they may expose themselves to new knowledge and possibly better ideas. They are pushing back against the steady pressure of confirmation bias.

WHEN CONFIRMATION BIAS JUST ISN'T ENOUGH

As if subconsciously engaging in a pattern of selective observation and remembering didn't cause enough problems, we also have motivated reasoning to contend with. Motivated reasoning is the conscious act of collecting information with a bias. This is where things can really go off the rails. Imagine injecting the effective yet stealthy confirmation bias with a cocktail of steroids and HGH, followed up with an extra-large espresso. Motivated reasoning is how we level up our selective thinking. It is as if we are not content to let our subconscious mind create these lopsided, often bogus cases in our heads, so we consciously work to help things along as well. It's like noticing that your house is flooding and deciding that turning on all of the faucets might help.

Motivated reasoning is how we end up with smart people arguing to no end that the Holocaust never happened24 and NASA faked the six Apollo Moon landings.²⁵ The more popular and durable conspiracy theories show motivated reasoning in full bloom. With bias as its guide, a committed human mind can build up a remarkably dense and complex defense of just about any crackpot claim. Think of someone who spends a year in a library researching euthanasia. However, this person reads and cites exclusively from books and journal articles in favor of this controversial issue while never opening any works opposed to it. By the end of the year, this researcher will be able to present a thorough and perhaps impressive argument on the merits of euthanasia. But can we respect this presentation? Can we trust it? Can the researcher trust himself or herself? Of course not, and this is why confirmation bias coupled with motivated reasoning is a nightmare scenario of delusion and denial about which we need to be fully aware. We easily recognize the problem with someone else doing one-sided research that fails to incorporate or even acknowledge the big picture. Yet this is precisely what many people do on social media every day. They spend months and years of their lives “researching” one side of a very long list of topics and issues. Most who do pay attention to competing ideas usually do so only to attempt to destroy them. The ultimate payoff for those with the courage to listen to opposing views and consider contrary evidence is a richer life, one that is closer to reality and less vulnerable to mistakes and manipulation.

TWIRLING THE COGNITIVE KALEIDOSCOPE

Drew Weston, a professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, used an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to learn more about motivated reasoning. He and his colleagues scanned the brains of people who were strongly Republican or strongly Democrat while the participants assessed comments by a Republican and a Democratic politician. Both politicians contradicted themselves, but the test subjects excused the candidate of their party and condemned their rival party's candidate. No surprise there. What was amazing, however, was that their brains did not show the kind of activity during this process that one might have predicted. The part of the brain where most reasoning occurs was inactive. The parts that lit up were those associated with emotion, conflict resolution, and reward. Don't miss that last one. Yes, you read that correctly: reward. In other words, we get to enjoy a nice little chemical treat in our brains when we manage to push aside or explain away troublesome input that threatens a belief or idea we have already latched onto. “We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” Weston said.26 “What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in resolving conflicts. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”

After learning about how confirmation bias and motivated reasoning affect each and every one of us, you may feel a bit down about social media and your engagement with it. But do not despair; it may help you to know that many people from all walks of life apply good thinking online every day, too. It's not foolproof, but it does help. This is the crowd you want to emulate. They understand that there are challenges, not only out there on the Internet, but also inside their own minds. Being aware of your confirmation bias and other subconscious challenges is step one. Step two is doing something about it, deciding not to be an easy target for external or internal threats to reason. Think your way around the Web. Think your way through social media. It's not so difficult, and it doesn't necessarily diminish the experience in any way. Apply critical thinking over enough time, and it becomes effortless, almost automatic. Ian Liberman, a sixty-five-year-old author, teacher, and game maker, says he spends about four hours per day on Facebook and Google Plus. He believes that social media is neither good nor bad but neutral. “You can be frivolous in what you do or you can contact individuals that are highly intellectual,” he said.27 “[It all] depends on the makeup of the user. For me it [social media] brings the world closer with meeting individuals, and researching themes and news. That is a positive thing. I use critical thinking to choose where I go to fulfill those objectives.”

REALITY WARPED: THE FIGHT AGAINST FAKE NEWS

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, letter, August 28, 1760²⁸

Social media came under heavy fire after the 2016 US presidential election. Many fake news articles went viral during the campaign and penetrated millions of minds, possibly affecting, maybe determining, the election result. It is unknown whether or not or to what degree fake news had an impact, because measuring its influence on voters is difficult, if not impossible. What we do know is that lies dressed up as respectable news have found social media to be a fertile environment in which to thrive.

How concerned should we be about fake news? Is it a crisis or a joke? If it is a real problem, what can be done? Numerous experts, from political scientists to philosophers, from leading journalists to business leaders, agree that fake news is a serious problem in need of immediate attention. Apple CEO Tim Cook, for example, believes fake news is “killing people's minds” and says that governments and corporations need to do more to fight it.²⁹ “It has to be ingrained in the schools, it has to be ingrained in the public,” Cook told the Telegraph. “There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic. We are going through this period of time right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth.”

THE GREAT PROPAGANDA PANDEMIC OF 2016

It is important to avoid exaggerating the significance of fake news and the 2016 election. It seems clear that this is a problem worthy of concern, but it's not as new a challenge as some seem to think. Disinformation—aka lying and spinning—has always been a part of politics, of course. Does anyone doubt that history's first politician told a few lies to the first voter? During the US presidential election of 1800, the Connecticut Courant warned its readers what a Thomas Jefferson victory would mean for America: “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest would be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed [and] the soil soaked with blood.”30 Not so different from the fake news of our time. But, still, we must recognize that the Great Propaganda Pandemic of 2016 was a significant moment in the history of outrageous lies dressed up as legitimate news. It is not difficult to see how the stage was set for it. Trust in traditional news media had plummeted; half of all Americans relied on Facebook to serve up their news; both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were deeply disliked by huge portions of the population;³¹ and overlapping social media networks made it easy for a provocative lie to reach millions of screens in a single afternoon. Moreover, research has shown that social media users tend to trust a news story based on their relationship with the person who shared it rather than the original source or author of the story.³² This means that when people see a New York Times or Wall Street Journal article, for example, that has been shared by someone less trusted, they are less inclined to believe it than articles produced by dubious or unknown sources. Worst of all, most people don't seem to even notice or remember the source of a news story they read. They tend to recall the social media platform they found it on but not the actual source that produced the story.³³ This a significant problem because identifying sources and assessing their trustworthiness is a key factor in spotting fake news. In addition to all of that, most people, then as now, are vulnerable to being fooled by fake news because they have poor critical thinking skills.

But wait, there's more. The 2016 fake news crisis or amusing sideshow—depending on how you view it—was set up by three trends that had been in motion long before. For decades now, newsrooms have been cutting staffs. Many good newspapers have either gone away or are now mere shadows of their former selves. Then there was the rise of hyper-partisan news sources like AM radio talk shows and cable news shows that prioritized political bias over facts and accuracy. Finally, the Internet has for years now been providing people the opportunity to inhabit their own little filter bubbles where they can consume steady diets of one-sided, politically slanted news as well as flat-out lies and propaganda. In retrospect, the stage was set for millions of people to be manipulated by ridiculous and dishonest articles pretending to be news. In 2016, social media hosted the perfect online storm of political fraud and human credulity.

After the smoke cleared somewhat, it was clear that Donald Trump's campaign had made brilliant use of social media data far beyond any benefit they may have gained from fake news. They drilled down and connected data points, got to the personal preferences, concerns, and psychological profiles of millions of people so that they could precisely target them with the most effective ads. Micro-targeting in political campaigns is not new, of course, but this was something at a level never seen before, according to expert observers.34

The Trump campaigners won largely because of their “expert manipulation of social media,” writes Sue Halpern in the New York Review of Books. She continues:

Donald Trump is our first Facebook president. His team figured out how to use all the marketing tools of Facebook, as well as Google, the two biggest advertising platforms in the world, to successfully sell a candidate that the majority of Americans did not want. They understood that some numbers matter more than others—in this case the number of angry, largely rural, disenfranchised potential Trump voters—and that Facebook, especially, offered effective methods for pursuing and capturing them…. What our Facebook president has discovered is that it actually pays only to please some of the people some of the time. The rest simply don't count.³⁵

BIGGER THAN POLITICS

It is important that no one mistake references to President Trump and his 2016 campaign by me in this book as a politically based attack against him, his supporters, the Republican Party, or conservatives in general. The crisis of poor critical thinking is not exclusive to one group or one ideology; it rises far above mere politics of the moment. This is about humankind and our collective future—whether we will move toward becoming a more rational species or stumble into some sad abyss, a self-inflicted dystopia of delusion and deceit. Tribal loyalties be damned, we are in this together. David Helfand, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and advocate for science and reason, dubs this the “Misinformation Age.”36 He believes that it is not only more difficult today for individuals to make decisions, given all of the lies and bogus beliefs flying about social media, but also a “disaster for the formation of rational public policy.” Helfand continues: “A counterinsurgency is definitely called for. But our actions will be ineffective if they are politicized and unpersuasive unless we scrupulously abide by the principles of a scientific mind.”

Again, this is bigger than politics.

DECLINING TRUST IN NEWS, RISING BELIEF IN LIES?

Trust in traditional news sources has been declining in America for years, and this trend, combined with the popularity and utility of social media platforms, helps to explain how fake news was able to penetrate so far and wide in recent years. Gallup has looked at American trust in news media since 1972; and it found that 2016 saw the lowest ever recorded levels of trust.³⁷ Less than a third of American adults, 32 percent, in that year, said that they had “a great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media. The high point of these Gallup surveys came in 1976, when 72 percent of Americans trusted the news. For a decade now, a minority of Americans say that they trust news media a great or fair amount.

Gallup suggests that the bizarre and contentious 2016 presidential campaign explains the all-time low of 32 percent. Republicans plunged to an astounding low of 14 percent having great or fair trust in the news media. “With many Republican leaders and conservative pundits saying Hillary Clinton has received overly positive media attention, while Donald Trump has been receiving unfair or negative attention,” Gallup stated, “this may be the prime reason their relatively low trust in the media has evaporated even more. It is also possible that Republicans think less of the media as a result of Trump's sharp criticisms of the press.”³⁹ It is important to point out that this vanishing trust in news media is not what it seems to be on the surface. People are not trusting the media less than before. If they were, then they would be more skeptical and analytical about what they read and hear. What has been happening is that specific trust in older, traditional news sources has been slipping, not for news in general. If people were becoming less trusting of all news, then they wouldn't be such easy targets for fake news.

TODAY THE BUCK STOPS WITH YOU

We've reached the summit of bullshit mountain…and you have to wonder if we'll find our way down again.

—David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker⁴⁰

The most important thing to keep in mind as we explore fake news in this chapter is that we are all on our own now. In the past, the public could rely, at least somewhat, on traditional gatekeepers such as newspaper, television, and radio editors and reporters to seek out information, analyze facts and events, judge relevance, and then accurately relay the facts to us. It doesn't matter that they fell well short of doing this perfectly every time. Even with all of their biases and failures, the gatekeepers of the latter half of the twentieth century did a much better job than millions of people currently are doing for themselves.

Lies, hoaxes, and propaganda flourish in the hyper-fast, connected ecosystem of social media. The winds have shifted, and most people are failing to adjust their sails accordingly. Like it or not, we all are publishers and editors now. It falls on every social media user to be his or her own fact-checker, and there should be some responsibility for what we “publish” in the form of a tweet, comment, or share. Shirk this responsibility and you condemn yourself to a state of high vulnerability before the countless liars and opportunists who are working hard to exploit, manipulate, or make a fool out of you. That's in addition to the multitudes of sloppy thinkers who unwittingly spread nonsense and propaganda throughout social media.

The flow of information is no longer limited to a few sources. News today comes at us from a thousand directions, often from new or unknown sources. The once dominant television news broadcasts and newspapers were imperfect, but at least they were known by all and could be counted on to be accurate and truthful most of the time. Today's social media is a dark jungle by comparison. “The major new challenge in reporting news is the new shape of truth,” said Kevin Kelly, a technology expert and co-founder of Wired magazine.41 “Truth is no longer dictated by authorities, but is networked by peers. For every fact there is a counterfact. All of those counterfacts and facts look identical online, which is confusing to most people.” I perhaps find it easier to appreciate the need to be skeptical and thoughtful of news more than most, thanks to my time spent working as a print and television journalist. Because of those experiences, I have long recognized that skepticism and fact-checking are essential to daily news consumption. I have seen firsthand how the sausage gets made, and how images and stories are cherry-picked for impact. For most of my life I have had the benefit of an internal firewall to protect me from fake news, because I understood that all news is potentially fake news. Before the Internet and social media existed I recognized that there are fallible and biased humans behind every news article, every TV and radio report. Fortunately, we all can come out of the current fake news era better off than ever. To achieve this, however, we first must admit our innate vulnerabilities and commit to applying critical thinking to every piece of news that comes our way, from any source.

WAIT, WHAT IS FAKE NEWS?

The considerable confusion, sincere and otherwise, surrounding what constitutes “fake” has made addressing this form of news more challenging. Merely inaccurate or disagreeable information does not necessarily qualify as fake news, as some politicians have claimed in an apparent attempt to muddy the waters and deflect criticism. Trump did this repeatedly in 2017.42 For example, he actually tweeted: “Any negative polls are fake news.”⁴³ Syrian president Bashar al-Assad tried this tactic as well. When a reporter for Yahoo! News asked him about human-rights violations, including an Amnesty International report claiming that thirteen thousand prisoners were killed at the Saydnaya Prison between 2011 and the end of 2015,⁴⁴ President Assad shrugged it off as fake news: “You can forge anything these days,” he said. “We are living in a fake news era.”⁴⁵ No, a news story or presentation of credible information is not fake news merely because it upsets someone. That can't work, because everything upsets somebody.

So what is fake news, then? Fake news is deceitful news. It includes lies, propaganda, hoaxes, and fraudulent clickbait created for the purpose of making money for somebody somewhere. This form of journalistic treachery is not new, but it has been taken to unprecedented heights thanks to the speed, reach, and convenience of social media networks. In the old fake news model, one person saw a tabloid headline at the grocery store checkout line—“President Kennedy and Batboy Found Alive in Secret Planned Parenthood Facility!”—and, if gullible enough to believe it, might share the lie later at home with a few friends or family members. It would then promptly die a natural death within hours or days. Today, however, one person looks at her phone while standing in line at the grocery store, sees a fake news story on her Facebook News Feed—“Hillary Clinton Confesses to Carrying Donald Trump's Love Child”—and, if gullible enough to believe it, shares the lie with potentially millions of people. An individual today can possess a staggering potential to spread good or bad information due to the overlap of so many social networks. A shared bit of information can easily jump from network to network so that a person with fewer than two hundred Facebook friends, for example, might be able to help push a story on to thousands, if not millions, beyond his or her immediate network.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as its 2016 International Word of the Year. Oxford Dictionaries editors reported a 2,000 percent increase in the use of this word from 2015. “Fueled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time,” said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries.46 “I wouldn't be surprised if post-truth becomes one of the defining words of our time.”

I suggest the following as a concise and useful definition of fake news: Fake news is dishonest news that has been crafted and published for the specific purpose of misleading readers, listeners, or viewers with knowingly false information. This is about intent. A poorly researched and poorly written news article with errors that was produced by an incompetent or slack journalist not in the service of a nefarious hidden agenda does not qualify as fake news. That is journalism's version of negligent manslaughter. The charge of journalistic premeditated murder, fake news, is appropriate only when someone intentionally lies with a specific goal in mind. That goal can include anything from garnering clicks for profit to making political gains.

The reason we can't apply the “fake news” label based on errors alone is because no reporting is error-free. If mistakes were the deciding factor, then all news sources would be purveyors of fake news—because none of them are perfect. Political bias also has been cited by some as an identifying trait of fake news. This is wrong as well. Bias in reporting may be bad journalism but, in many cases, it's still journalism. For example, Fox News and MSNBC have clear right and left political leanings, respectively. However, on any given day both can and do produce news packages that can't fairly be condemned as politically biased. Although these straightforward reports may indeed serve a larger theme that is overtly biased, they are not propaganda or fake news in isolation.

PEELING THE ONION

The Onion, Inc., is a media company that specializes in news satire. It began in print back in 1988 and launched a website in 1996. Its writers are brilliant at imitating real news delivery in the presentation of absurd, funny stories, commentaries, and videos. All of those who are capable of laughter will find much to enjoy in the Onion's efforts. Though most of its material includes kernels of truth within, and sometimes boulders, the punchlines are clear punchlines, at least to most people. But like intentionally deceptive fake news, Onion stories often fool people. Its articles have been taken as true by many people and organizations, including a US congressman,47 a FIFA vice president,⁴⁸ Fox News,⁴⁹ and the Beijing Evening News.⁵⁰ One of my personal favorites from the Onion—“Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked”—was good enough to end up reported on as true in not one but two Bangladeshi newspapers.⁵¹ Despite all of this, however, the Onion's work as well as that of others in the same vein do not deserve the “fake news” label. They should not be filtered away, banned, or attacked for what they do. Humor need not be a casualty in anyone's war against fake news. A joke is not a lie. Satire is not fake news. The burden falls on news consumers to think critically so that they may separate one from the other.

JOURNALISM 101: SPECIAL EDITION FOR THE MASSES

A significant yet often overlooked problem that helps fuel the spread of fake news is general ignorance about news. It's shocking how little many people understand about journalism, and this lack of knowledge makes them more vulnerable to fake news. In the flurry of media coverage about fake news after the 2016 US presidential election, almost no attention was devoted to this root problem. To be clear, I'm referring not to awareness about current events or being able to name current world leaders but rather to a common ignorance or misunderstanding of how news itself is crafted, categorized, and presented. This may seem unbelievable to some, but it's true that many people, possibly most, cannot consistently recognize and understand the differences between and the intended purposes of news reports, editorials, op-ed pieces, feature stories, letters to the editor, and even reader comments posted at the end of an online article.

As a journalist and editor with experience in almost every aspect of the business, I have published countless newspaper, magazine, and web news articles. I know firsthand that even the most basic, straightforward, short, and innocuous news article or photograph has the potential to confuse people. More than once, for example, I have had to spend significant amounts of time explaining to someone why I had the audacity to express my opinion in a clearly identified opinion column. I also have had to explain that quoting someone in my news article does not mean that I necessarily endorse what the person said. This points to a significant failure by news media companies. They assume that the public understands how journalism works. But most people don't, and this leaves them vulnerable to fake news. News providers should concern themselves more with the media literacy of their readers, listeners, and viewers. Elevating media literacy throughout society needs to be a priority. All schools and every parent should attempt to educate young children about news. These concerns I have about the public's understanding of basic journalism are based on more than personal anecdotes.

In November 2016, the Stanford History Education Group published Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning, which examined the findings of its eighteen-month study on how well middle school, high school, and college students can assess the credibility of news and social media information they commonly encounter online.52 The researchers analyzed thousands of responses to fifty-six tasks from students across twelve states. The students were diverse. For example, some attended “under-resourced, inner-city schools” in Los Angeles, and others “well-resourced schools” in suburbs outside of Minneapolis. The college students were from six different universities, including Stanford, an elite school with a 94 percent applicant rejection rate, and large state universities that admit the majority of students who apply.

The testing was intended to identify basic competence from incompetence. The researchers say they did not attempt to catch students with tricky questions or nitpick minor distinctions. They showed students screenshots of news webpages, Facebook posts, and tweets. Students were asked to evaluate the material to see if they could discern news articles from ads, judge the reliability of photos and websites, and so on. The goal was to discover whether “digital natives,” young people who have always known the Internet and are online as much as or more than anyone these days, were savvy thinkers in cyberspace. Spoiler alert: What the study found is disturbing and suggests that the next wave of American adults may be no better than the current generation when it comes to intelligently assessing news. “Easily duped” is how the researchers described America's online youth.⁵³ They asserted, “Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite.”⁵⁴ The Stanford History Education Group investigators write:

In every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation. For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not. Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are off…. Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish.⁵⁵

To better understand how severe the challenges are, consider these brief highlights from the Stanford History Education Group study:

• More than 75 percent of middle school students correctly identified news stories and traditional advertisements.56
• Middle school students struggle with native advertising, the increasingly common practice of presenting ads in ways that make them look like real news. A native advertisement fooled more than 80 percent of the students—even though it was clearly identified by the phrase “sponsored content.” Some students even saw this and noted it but still believed that it was an authentic news article. “This suggests that many students have no idea what ‘sponsored content’ means and that this is something that must be explicitly taught as early as elementary school.”⁵⁷
• The researchers showed high school students a photo of flowers from an image-sharing website. The photo was accompanied with the claim that the flowers have “nuclear birth defects” as a result of Japan's 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Fewer than 20 percent of students challenged the source of the photo or the claim. Nearly 40 percent of students argued that it was strong evidence of nuclear contamination because the photo showed conditions near the power plant.⁵⁸
• A majority of university students failed when tasked to evaluate a tweet. Only a few of the students recognized that the tweet relied on data from a professional polling firm, which would make the information more credible. Less than a third of the students noted that the political agenda of the organization that authored the tweet might have influenced the content.⁵⁹
• More than half of the university students failed to even click on the link provided within the tweet they assessed. “These results suggest that students need further instruction in how best to navigate social media content, particularly when that content comes from a source with a clear political agenda.”⁶⁰

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

Sam Wineburg, and Sarah McGrew, authors of the Stanford study discussed above, observed professional fact-checkers conduct online searches to learn how they sort out real news from fake news in contrast to typical college, high school, and middle school students. Three things stood out among the professional fact-checkers when compared to the students:

1. Professional fact-checkers read “laterally.” They “jump off the original page, opening up a new tab, Googling the name of the organization or its president. Dropped in the middle of a forest, hikers know they can't divine their way out by looking at the ground. They use a compass. Similarly, fact-checkers use the vast resources of the Internet to determine where information is coming from before they read it.”61
2. Professional fact-checkers don't trust the “About” page on a site. “They don't evaluate a site based solely on the description it provides about itself. If a site can masquerade as a nonpartisan think tank when funded by corporate interests and created by a Washington public relations firm, it can surely pull the wool over our eyes with a concocted ‘About’ page.”
3. Professional fact-checkers don't trust Google. Instead of relying on Google's presentation of pages as a reflection of reliability (which would be a misunderstanding of how the search engine's algorithms work), “the fact-checkers regularly scrolled down to the bottom of the search results page in their quest to make an informed decision about where to click first.”⁶²

“None of this [fact-checking] is rocket science,” write Wineburg and McGrew in an article published by PBS NewsHour. “But it's often not taught in school. In fact, some schools have special filters that direct students to already vetted sites, effectively creating a generation of bubble children who never develop the immunities needed to ward off the toxins that float across their Facebook feeds, where students most often get their news. This approach protects young people from the real world rather than preparing them to deal with it.”⁶³

If you are a parent, please make it a point to explain to your children or teenagers that an Internet search does not call up websites that have been expertly and thoroughly vetted for truth or ranked by a measure of accuracy, as many assume. Make sure that they understand that Google and other search engines merely present links to sites based on what algorithms determine is relevant to the search, and sometimes ads are placed at the top of the search results which can mislead some people. Search algorithms involve factors such as inbound links and usage of keywords. So, while it's not exactly a popularity contest, it may help to think of search results that way. If you search for “psychic,” for example, most of the top results likely will be links that endorse and encourage belief in supernatural mind reading. You must go deep to find links that lead to skeptical perspectives and alternate explanations for how psychics do what they do. Google is not the ace librarian at your local library. To its credit, however, Google did promise in 2017 to work at tweaking its system so that at least some generic searches will be less prone to presenting webpages of outright lies or nonsense.64 This is a complicated issue, however, because we shouldn't want one company—or government, for that matter—deciding for us what is true or not. Ideally, we all should be able to think for ourselves. Given the current state of critical thinking, however, it's probably best if Google does pull some weeds to reduce their infestation of so many human minds. But don't wait on the engineers to come up with the magic algorithm that will keep you safe. Think for yourself today. Assume a skeptical stance now.

Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, researches misinformation in politics. He points out that technology and social media are allowing people to consume and spread news faster than ever before. We may be “supercharging” the process of spreading false information among like-minded people, he said.⁶⁵ Nyhan studied the effect of fact-checking during the 2016 US presidential campaign and found reason for hope. “The findings were encouraging,” he told me, “because we found some evidence of responsiveness to fact-checks even among the respondents we expected to be most resistant to them.” He continued,

My coauthors and I conducted an experiment in which we corrected misleading rhetoric from Trump's convention speech suggesting that crime in the US had increased dramatically. It is actually way down from historical highs over the medium to long term. There was a very slight uptick in 2015, but relative to twenty years ago, it has declined dramatically. We provided corrective information to people saying that official statistics show that the crime rate is down substantially. That intervention was effective at reducing misperceptions about crime increasing, even among Trump supporters, whom you might expect to be most resistant. We thought that result was encouraging. Some of the findings in this field, including my own, can be pretty depressing. I take that study to mean all hope is not lost, and there's still a lot of room to learn what's most effective in responding to misinformation.

VISIBLE LISTENING

Carrie James is a principal investigator for Project Zero,66 a research organization within the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has done extensive research on the activities of young people online, including their challenges when it comes to discerning credible news from fake news. “While concerns around fake news are at a peak now, good tips for scrutinizing online sources with a critical eye have been around for some time,” she told me.⁶⁷ “I like the advice⁶⁸ of Common Sense Media from their recent news literacy effort focused on parents and kids. [‘Filtered experiences’ feels like a bigger challenge. Recent political events—including the fact that Trump's election blindsided many in the US and beyond—reveal the degree to which many of us operate in echo chambers and filter bubbles…. We all need to be proactive in seeking alternative sources of news [and] information and truly diverse perspectives on the critical issues of our time. So all of us need to be examining our online friending and following habits, looking for opportunities to broaden the array of perspectives to which we are exposed. And once we've diversified our networks, we have to be willing to listen attentively to what others have to say, with an intent to understand and learn.”

Related to this, James says that a key theme in her recent work has been strategies for “visible listening” in online conversations. Visible listening refers to a form of deep learning whereby one more thoughtfully probes and reacts to information. With so much attention placed on speed and quantity—the number of followers, likes, retweets, and so on—James hopes for a rise in the quality of social media interactions. “I co-direct an online global learning community⁶⁹ for which we've designed a dialogue tool kit,⁷⁰ a set of lean structures intended to support visible listening and mindful commenting. Our end goal is to help youth, our primary audience, develop the skills and dispositions to slow down, listen attentively to others, and engage meaningfully with individuals from diverse backgrounds, especially in online contexts.”

THE BOUNDLESS NATURE OF BELIEF

After having researched and written about irrational beliefs and the weird inner workings of the human mind for many years, I have been rendered virtually incapable of being surprised by what some people are willing to believe. To be human, I have learned, is to be capable of embracing any absurdity. I've had conversations with intelligent, highly educated people who think the Earth is hollow and contains huge secret subterranean cities. Otherwise sensible people have tried to convince me that a preacher can heal AIDS and cancer by extending his hand toward the sick and calling down the Holy Spirit. I've seen genuine fear in the eyes of people who “knew” the world would end soon by supernatural means. I once dated a woman who was haunted by a nagging concern that ghosts and demons might cause her harm. I know from experience, therefore, that even the most ludicrous and unreasonable fake news story can and will be accepted by some people as true. Wherever good thinking is scarce or absent, anything can be packed and sold as fact.

Consider the strange case of Edgar M. Welch. The twenty-eight-year-old father of two and North Carolina resident drove 350 miles to Washington, DC, then walked into the Comet Ping Pong, a kid-themed pizza restaurant, and opened fire with a military-style rifle. (Fortunately, nobody was injured in the attack.) Why did Welch do this? Because he was determined to break up an alleged international, satanic child sex-slave operation that Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats were running out of the restaurant. Why did he believe that such terrible crimes were being committed there? He read it on social media, of course.71 “I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way,” Welch later told a New York Times reporter.⁷²

He added that he dislikes the term “fake news” and suggested that use of the label is a way of degrading news articles that don't come from established media sources. Welch wasn't the only person taken in by this particular false claim, as tens of thousands shared it.⁷³ Comet Ping Pong received hundreds of death threats.⁷⁴ No less than former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn, who was at the time an influential member of President Trump's cabinet, used social media to promote the false Clinton child-sex-slave claim and other fake news stories.75 His son and aid, Michael G. Flynn, did as well. The son even tweeted the following message after Welch had been arrested for the shooting incident: “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #Podesta Emails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.”⁷⁶ Harvard's Howard Gardner, a leading developmental psychologist who has dedicated much of his life trying to understand how people think and learn, asks one of the key questions for the times we live in: “Do people really want to know the truth in the digital era?”⁷⁷ Not at all, it seems; even the most minimal effort to separate fact from fiction takes the wind from the sails of most fake news stories, and yet here we are, with people in positions of authority promoting fake news. Gardner wrote a particularly moving essay published on his website in reaction to the explosion of online fake news. You can feel sadness and frustration in his words:

As if to finish the final funeral of truth, we have an electorate, many of whom do not seem to care about rampant lying; and the creation of a new category—fake or false news: news which is simply made up for propaganda purposes and is then circulated as if it had been carefully researched and validated…. Until 2016, I had assumed that truth was a widely accepted goal—we might even say a widely accepted good—even though, of course, it is not always achieved…. But I have had to come face-to-face with an uncomfortable, if not untenable situation: if we don't agree about what is true, and if we don't even care about what is true, then how can we even turn our attention to what is good, let alone care about what is good, and what is not?⁷⁸

It is long been common to hear concerns about voters being educated and informed on important issues. But the fake news/social media phenomenon of 2016 highlights a new aspect of this problem. Twenty or thirty years ago, the agreed-upon solution to the problem of misinformed voters was getting more people to consume more news. That goal no longer makes sense, however, because “the news” has become so fractured, so much of it partisan, unreliable, inconsistent, dishonest, or self-serving. More news alone is not the answer. At this moment in history an unprecedented number of human beings are under constant mental assault by countless streams of nonsense and lies. It is possible today, thanks in large part to social media, for a typical person to be a dedicated and constant consumer of news and yet simultaneously be profoundly ignorant of world events and even of basic realty. News has never been perfect, of course. It has always included plenty of bias, incompetence, and lies; but at one time there was at least the common practice and understanding that the news was meant to inform the public about facts and actual events, to steer people in the general direction of truth, at least most of the time. That's gone now.

WHEN REAL JOURNALISTS SPREAD FAKE NEWS

Anthony C. Adornato has done some important research on the problem of fake news. The former television news reporter and anchor is now an assistant professor of journalism at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. Adornato conducted a nationwide survey of news directors at network affiliate television stations, and what he found is disturbing: There has been, for some years now, a strong trend toward traditional and established news media outlets covering social media posts as news. This has led to a rise in these newsrooms spreading false information. A third of those surveyed by Adornato said they had reported information from social media that was later found to be false or inaccurate. Most disturbing, says Adornato, is that of those stations that have a social media policy, “nearly 40 percent said the policy does not include procedures for verifying social media content before it is included in a newscast.”79

At the dawn of the Internet age, optimism and utopianism were common. One could scarcely go five minutes in the early 1990s without hearing someone go on about the glorious new age of free and accessible knowledge, and all that the Internet was going to deliver. A borderless world was at hand. The Internet was to be the great equalizer. A new age of enlightenment was upon us. And yet here we are today, awash in a digital disaster of misinformation and fake news. What happened?

The challenge of an ignorant and misinformed public is no longer as simple as getting more people to pay attention to the news, because news is such a significant part of the problem. But this must be addressed and remedied somehow because bad information combined with bad thinking raises the likelihood of people making disastrous decisions in the voting booth and in their lives, generally. “If we cannot ensure that we are receiving credible news and information,” warns Rory O'Connor, an author and documentary filmmaker who has written about social media, “the implications for our democracy, which depends on an active, informed citizenry, are enormous.”80 President Barack Obama believes that fake news on social media and the confusion it sows pose a threat to nothing less than freedom and prosperity: “We won't know what to fight for,” he said.⁸¹ “And we can lose so much of what we've gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we've come to take for granted.”

Miriam Metzger, associate professor at UC Santa Barbara, is an expert on the social uses and effects of communication technology. She also studies issues related to the credibility of digital information. “I see two findings in the research, and in some ways they are at odds,” she told me.⁸²

One is that most people prefer news that they think is objective and presents all important perspectives. The other is that people prefer and gravitate toward information that they believe is congenial to their political perspective. More interestingly, the research seems to indicate that people have a hard time identifying bias in news that they feel is attitude-consistent. A hypothetical example might be a Republican feeling that Fox News is more “fair and unbiased” than a nonpartisan news source. Yet people often feel that “objective” news is biased. This is known as the “Hostile Media Effect.”⁸³

While Metzger says the research hasn't caught up sufficiently at this point to say anything definitive about how vulnerable social media leaves a typical user to believing fake news, she does suspect that the breadth of information transfer through social media may be a significant factor. “Social media are another channel through which people are exposed to news—real or fake—and so from a simple distribution perspective, social media help to transmit news to people who might not otherwise seek it out or see it at all. There has always been fake news—think tabloids—but one possible effect of digital media generally is that it is harder to know which sources are legitimate purveyors of news and which are not.” She continued, “For example, in the print era we all knew that the National Enquirer was a purveyor of fake news, so it wasn't taken as serious news. Today, the plethora of sources of information available and accessible online make knowing each one impossible, and so too discerning which are credible and which are not. Always be skeptical,” she added. “Don't accept anything at face value. Think. Read widely.”

CONTRADICTORY “FOUNTAINS OF FACTS”

“Knowledge is power; capture it and you capture power in a democracy,” states Michael Lynch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut who studies the impact of technology on human society. He is concerned about today's unprecedented ease of access to “alternative facts.”84 “There is nothing to fear from information when counterinformation is just as plentiful,” he says.⁸⁵ When so many contradictory “fountains of facts” are just a click away from anyone with a computer or smartphone, the notion of building or maintaining an informed electorate becomes a far more complex challenge. For Lynch, the bigger worry now is not about who controls the content, but rather who controls the flow of that content. “It is no coincidence,” he writes, “that we are now seeing Big Data companies like Facebook sponsor presidential debates.”

It is important to recognize that the mere presence of real news amid fake news is not a solution. Even reducing the amount of fake news doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will turn to real news. As Lynch points out, people must know and understand real information, too. “There are reasons to think we are no closer to an informed citizenry…than we ever have been. Indeed, we might be further away.” He continues:

Searching the Internet can get you to information that would back up almost any claim of fact, no matter how unfounded. It is both the world's best fact-checker and the world's best bias confirmer—often at the same time…. The very availability of information can make us think that the ideal of the informed citizen is more realized than it is—and that, in turn, can actually undermine the ideal, making us less informed, simply because we think we know all we need to know already…. We no longer disagree just over values. Nor do we disagree just over the facts. We disagree over whose source—whose fountain of facts—is the right one. And once disagreement reaches that far down, the daylight of reason seems very far away indeed.86

“Facts are the closest thing we have to a national religion,” writes Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone magazine, lamenting this new era of alternative facts.⁸⁷ “In America, where sex-tapers become royalty and monster trucks massively outdraw Shakespeare, even advertisers aren't supposed to just lie. The truth is the last thing here that isn't openly for sale.”

WHO BELIEVES THIS STUFF?

How did the United States, one of the wealthiest and most educated societies ever, end up here? Why are so many Americans willing to believe almost anything? How can someone in a high government position utter the phrase “alternative facts” and receive nodding agreement from millions of Americans? Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, thinks that, for many, extreme credulity has become one of the components of being a proud American. Accepting crazy claims and stupid ideas is now seen as an aspect of freedom—the freedom to be fooled, if you will. Andersen writes: “Being American means we can believe any damn thing we want; that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else's, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.”⁸⁸ Andersen maintains that the United States has become unique among developed nations: “Treating real life as fantasy and vice versa, and taking preposterous ideas seriously is not unique to Americans. But we are the global crucible and epicenter. We invented the fantasy-industrial complex; almost nowhere outside poor or otherwise miserable countries are flamboyant supernatural beliefs so central to the identities of so many people. This is American exceptionalism in the 21st century.”⁸⁹

BuzzFeed, a news site that focuses on digital media, studied the fake news problem by analyzing more than a thousand posts on six “hyperpartisan” Facebook pages. Three of the pages were right-wing and three were left-wing. BuzzFeed determined that the right-wing pages had the higher rate of fake news. Thirty-eight percent of right-wing posts examined were false or mostly false, compared with 19 percent of false or mostly false left-wing posts.90 Regardless of whether anti–Hillary Clinton fake news articles drew more media attention and outnumbered anti-Trump fake news, it would be a mistake to view this as a conservative or right-wing problem. Fake news is a human problem.

“I certainly don't blame people who are being misled,” said Nyhan, the Dartmouth political science professor who studies misinformation in politics. “I feel that we too often blame the public for being human beings rather than the politicians and media sources that deceive them. People reading their social media feeds and being deceived are the victims, not the perpetrators. But it is important to be careful about what we share. We have to be responsible and avoid spreading misinformation, and retract and correct when we do.”⁹¹

FACEBOOK AND FAKE NEWS

Fake News from Unreliable Sites	vs.	Accurate News from Reliable Sites
8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook		7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook

Source: BuzzFeed study of Facebook and fake news during the last three months of the 2016 US presidential election.⁹²

BuzzFeed analyzed Facebook posts and found that some fake election news articles outperformed real election news from nineteen major news outlets combined. In total engagement on Facebook (liking, reacting, commenting, and sharing), fake news beat real news—and by a significant amount.⁹³ Over the last three months of the campaign, made-up stories from dubious sources were more popular than accurate articles from more established sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and NBC News. In the closing weeks of the campaign, the twenty top-performing fake stories from hoax and hyperpartisan sites generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. The twenty best-performing election stories from nineteen major news sites generated 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments (see the table provided above).

TRUMP'S TRIUMPH PUTS FAKE NEWS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Of the top twenty fake news articles, seventeen were clearly anti–Hillary Clinton or pro–Donald Trump. The two most successful false stories, according to the BuzzFeed study, were the pope endorsing Trump, and Clinton selling weapons to ISIS.94 There may be a psychological reason for this imbalance, as evidenced by a recent study by UCLA.

A 2017 University of California–Los Angeles study found that the degree to which one is liberal or conservative can predict how likely he or she is to believe news or information about a danger. Conservatives tend to be more concerned about risk and danger than liberals are. This makes them more vulnerable to falling for false dangers. This does not mean conservatives are generally more gullible. The study addressed the specific topic of danger. If another study focused on fake news that centered on a benefit in change or progress, I suspect liberals would probably believe it at a higher rate than conservatives would. “Social conservatives see safety in the status quo, while liberals see opportunity in change,” said anthropologist Daniel Fessler, the study's lead researcher.⁹⁵ Because the world is filled with both dangers and opportunities, we cannot say that one way is right and the other wrong, Fessler explained. If a danger is real, liberals may suffer by ignoring it. If a perceived danger is false or insignificant, conservatives may suffer due to unnecessary actions or by missing out on opportunities because of unwarranted caution.

There is, of course, no limit to this kind of thing. A few creative con artists and an infinitely gullible public form a near-perfect symbiotic system. And don't assume that the fakers care about politics. In 2016, for example, some enterprising teenagers in a small town in Macedonia profited off the US presidential election by pumping out wild but untrue pro-Trump fake news stories.96 These particular news reports traced back to some 140 websites with American-sounding names such as “USConservativeToday.com.”⁹⁷ When an irresistible story goes viral, those views and shares turn into money via pay-per-click ads on the webpages. The perpetrators of the fraud cared nothing about Trump winning. They were in it for the money.⁹⁸

The most disturbing revelation from the 2016 election cyber-subterfuge was the creative and concerted effort by the Russian government to influence it in Trump's favor. This included the use of not only hacked and leaked Democratic Party e-mails but also fake news delivered through social media. The Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all concluded that this really did happen.⁹⁹ Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden described Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election the “most successful covert influence operation in history.”¹⁰⁰ Even if Russian-sourced fake news stories had no significant impact on how people voted in that election, we can view the event as a warning. In the coming years, it now seems likely, if not inevitable, that many powerful entities with considerable resources are likely to weaponize social media as a component of their propaganda wars.

The most successful fake news stories tend to have a too-good-to-be-true feel. This should always ring alarm bells for savvy news consumers and good critical thinkers. All social media users are targets for this kind of thing, because the ever-present goal is to grab attention and get clicks—whatever it takes. One successful fake news story claimed that Academy Award–winning actor Denzel Washington had declared his support for Trump's campaign. It was the perfect snare for any Trump supporters who were hungry for ammunition to counter accusations of racism against their candidate. The article was shared hundreds of thousands of times before election day, even though it was untrue.¹⁰¹ The piece originated from a website named “American News.” Even the fastest glance at this site, however, should make it obvious to anyone that it is not in the business of producing accurate and honest news. But those who are not in the habit of pausing to think before believing fell for it. Those who did not check the source or look for corroborating reports were sitting ducks. Desire defeats reason all of the time. One of the core principles of good thinking is to be mature enough to seek out and accept what is real, rather than blindly pretending that comforting hopes and beliefs are real. People want to believe something, so they naturally suppress or ignore the impulse to doubt and verify. When something feels too good to be true, be more vigilant, not less so.

Another bogus article that went viral claimed that Hillary Clinton bought $137 million worth of illegal arms.102 It came from a clearly suspicious website named “What Does It Mean.” There are countless sham websites that are nothing more than clickbait factories producing extreme and absurd articles designed to catch the eye of gullible people—which, to some degree, means all of us.

Although Hillary Clinton got it the worst during the campaign, Trump took some hits, too. One particularly embarrassing Trump quote moved through social media circles. It helped portray him as exploitive and cynical, a must-share for Trump haters. According to this post, Trump told People magazine back in 1998 that Republicans were dumb and believe anything they hear on Fox News. But he never said it. It was a made-up quote designed to damage his campaign.¹⁰³

TOP FIVE FAKE NEWS STORIES PRIOR TO THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AS RANKED BY SHARES, REACTIONS, AND COMMENTS ON FACEBOOK¹⁰⁴

1. “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement” (Source: Ending the Fed)
2. “WikiLeaks CONFIRMS Hilary Sold Weapons to ISIS…Then Drops Another BOMBSHELL! Breaking News” (Source: Political Insider)
3. “IT'S OVER: Hillary's ISIS Email Leaked and It's Worse Than Anyone Could Have Imagined” (Source: Ending the Fed)
4. “Just Read the Law: Hillary Is Disqualified from Holding Any Federal Office” (Source: Ending the Fed)
5. “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide” (Source: Denver Guardian)

Source: BuzzFeed study¹⁰⁵

Did the fake news that spread like a pandemic via social media play a meaningful role in the 2016 presidential election? Maybe, but who can be sure? Most people vote the way they do for more than one reason. The bigger question is, what can be done about this serious problem that did not go away after the election? Google, Twitter, and Facebook responded to the charge of being massive conduits for hoaxes, lies, and propaganda by promising to get tougher on fake news. Less than one week after the election, Google announced that it would stop making its AdSense advertising network available for use by fake news websites, and Facebook changed its policies to include a ban on ads that promote fake news.106

Political misinformation researcher Nyhan says that fake news made up a small portion of the total information people consumed during 2016 US election. “I would hardly define it as the reason Trump won, as some people have suggested,” he said.¹⁰⁷ “I don't think there's any evidence to support that claim. But those stories were shared millions of times on Facebook, and we do need to take seriously the way the purveyors of fake news have found large audiences. It has become financially attractive to mislead Americans with bogus news stories…. A perverse financial incentive was created. Facebook and Google are starting to take steps to counter that threat. I'm concerned about partisan misinformation more broadly. I think that's a very serious concern. We depend on some kind of a shared basis in factual reality to have a public debate about what our government is doing and should be doing.”

Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, denied in a post that his company had influenced the election either way: “After the election, many people are asking whether fake news contributed to the result, and what our responsibility is to prevent fake news from spreading. These are very important questions and I care deeply about getting them right…. Of all of the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.”¹⁰⁸

Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, was not impressed with Zuckerberg's response: “In holding fast to the claim that his company has little effect on how people make up their minds, Mr. Zuckerberg is doing real damage to American democracy—and to the world.”109 Internet media expert Jose van Dijck, of the Netherlands, told me that she believes there is clear need for more responsibility from social media companies. “Platforms like Facebook should realize they cannot hide behind the excuse of being a ‘mere’ technical facilitator or ‘mediator’ between content and users. Now that the US population receives 50 percent of their news through [Facebook's] News Feed, Facebook should behave like a responsible news organization and take care of the content it distributes—whether it is racial slurs, copyrighted material, or fake news.”¹¹⁰

FINANCIAL FAKE NEWS

It's not just the “Hillary Clinton Shoots Bigfoot” type of articles that fool gullible people. Fake news can strike anywhere and potentially snare anyone. In 2017, hundreds of articles were published on top financial news sites that were found to be misleading and biased fake news. They were written by people who had been paid to promote certain biotech stocks. This was according to enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The payments received by the writers were not disclosed to readers. According to the SEC charge, twenty-seven individuals and entities “posted bullish articles about [publicly traded] companies on the Internet under the guise of impartiality when in reality they were nothing more than paid advertisements.”¹¹¹

Based on discussions I had and surveys I conducted with more than one hundred experts and laypersons after the election, there seems to be a popular belief that banning, censoring, and/or labeling fake news will fix this. But these steps alone are unlikely to succeed. It reminds me of America's “War on Drugs.” Fighting only the supply side of the equation while ignoring the demand is probably not a winning strategy. The reality is that people, not just the bogus news articles, are a key part of the problem, too. It's time for social media users to take responsibility for the beliefs they allow to enter their minds. Convincing people to embrace good thinking on social media would rob the purveyors of fake news the target-rich environments they have enjoyed. Therefore, the priority target in this fight should not be the bogus articles themselves or even the sources that spawn them. Those things still matter, of course, and should be given due attention, but the decisive battles will take place within human minds. The fundamental challenge here is that some people can't or won't apply critical thinking skills while consuming news and information online. The idea of banning or blocking fake news strikes me as accepting or, worse, encouraging and enabling a culture of passive stupidity. We are not rocks. We are human beings capable of reason and analysis. We all have remarkably powerful brains. The potential for good thinking is always present, in everyone. Properly and consistently applied, critical thinking skills can defeat fake news almost every time.

Perhaps stung by global criticism for their role in enabling a culturally corrosive free-for-all of lies and idiocy, Google and Facebook promised to make significant changes in 2017 toward improving the situation. In addition to their previously mentioned promise to reduce the financial incentive by restricting ad sales to fake news producers, Google now allows people—actual human beings—to flag hoaxes, overt propaganda, and the worst of the conspiracy theories. Google also said that it has tweaked its algorithms to push “low-quality content” further down in search results.112 In April 2017, Facebook announced that it would continue working to make it easier for users to be aware of related articles and third-party fact-checkers before reading an article.¹¹³ It will take time to see if it's effective, but this is a sensible approach because once a lie or a bad idea gets into a human mind, it can be difficult to extinguish it. Better that more credible information is available earlier rather than later. This is similar to how preventive vaccines are always preferable to after-the-fact cures.

HOW TO KEEP FAKE NEWS OUT OF YOUR HEAD

• Be skeptical of everything. Online or off-line, never accept any claim, story, or news article as 100 percent true. Always leave a door slightly ajar for escape. Take the stance that all knowledge is provisional. Hold on to some humility and uncertainty so that you don't tie yourself too tightly to a mistake or lie. Doubt is a good thing. Skepticism is not cynicism. Thinking critically does not mean you are closed-minded or negative. Doing so is safe and wise. We should approach all news we encounter in this way, regardless of the source. The BBC and the New York Times make mistakes every day. No journalist is perfect every time—and sometimes one of them just plain lies.114 You don't have to rise to a state of paranoia, but you should maintain a high level of awareness and concern about what you are taking in. Dishonest people are out there, every day, hoping that you will be lazy in a key moment they can exploit.

WINDOW INTO THE MADNESS

People have always been sloppy thinkers, and the act of one person transmitting crazy ideas to other people predates civilization. What is new today is that this phenomenon of spreading lies and false beliefs has been energized and amplified by the Internet and social media. For most of human existence, most crackpot notions were localized, their growth constrained by communication limitations. Now even the most absurd and unlikely claims can thrive, reaching millions.

Before the Internet, Alex Jones, the man behind InfoWars, a prolific conspiracy-theory-factory of a website, would have struggled. He might have barely managed to entertain five or six gullible people at his local Starbucks with talk of a NASA child slave colony on Mars¹¹⁵ or the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre having been a government false-flag operation.¹¹⁶ Today, however, Jones has the ear of millions of fans, including, it seems, a US president. In December 2015, then candidate Trump appeared on Jones's show and declared to the host: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”¹¹⁷

Today anyone can observe the reach and popularity of someone like Alex Jones. Millions of clicks, shares, likes, comments, and retweets give evidence to a significant problem. The Internet has empowered those who would spread misinformation and encourage the most ludicrous beliefs. But at the same time, it also gives the rest of us a window into the madness. Thanks to the Internet and social media, we can observe irrational beliefs in real time as they surge through society. The key question is, having seen the problem, are we smart enough and responsible enough to formulate and implement necessary solutions?

• Consider the source. While we cannot trust any source completely and without reservation, the reputation of a source is a key step in assessing a news article. One of the first things I do when I encounter a news article, post, or anything online is to look at the source. I rarely, if ever, read the entire text of a news story without first noting the source. When many people land on a webpage, however, they begin reading the content. Even if they are thoughtful enough to be concerned with errors, bias, and dishonesty, they make the key mistake of assuming that any problems present will become apparent while reading. This is not necessarily so. Before I waste my time and risk letting lies or nonsense creep into my mind, I ask myself the following questions: Who is behind this website? Who wrote the material? Who took this photo and wrote the caption under it? Who is paying the bills here? If I don't know the answers to at least some of these questions, or if there is a clear agenda at work that compromises truth and reality, I'm out. I may still read the article, but my capacity to absorb it as fact shrinks to almost nothing. Before believing, I will need to see more of the same information from better sources.

  Specifically related to this, I have watched people conduct Internet searches when trying to find an answer or research a topic, and it is shocking how few people check the source before plunging into the information. This is a critical error that leads millions of people off course in their thinking and worldview. There are many times when an article should be dismissed before reading, simply due to its source. I know this may seem harsh, maybe even closed-minded, but it's not. It's good thinking. There is just too much bad information on the Web. For example, if a middle school student is researching basic facts about the Holocaust for a class project, the last thing she needs to do is land on some Neo-Nazi site and waste her time reading an article that claims it never happened.

• Google is not a god. I know, I know; Google is great. How did we ever live without it? But it's still just a search engine. It feeds you results based on the query and perhaps your online identity as determined by the algorithms working behind your back. Google is not your personal librarian. It's not an arbiter of truth, a champion of science and reason, or anything else like that. It's a search engine. You put words in, it spits out links to relevant websites. This is merely the starting point and not the end of the research road. You have to think and sort out the wheat from the chaff, the real from the fake.
• Slow down. When reading news, it's wise to withhold fully accepting a claim or digging in on a position until you know more, preferably from multiple sources. Did you just read that Kanye West kicked a puppy? Wait and gather more intel before deleting all of his songs from your playlist. Never forget that an important component of news is speed, never more so than today. But while speed is a priority for news media companies, it doesn't have to be yours. Let others rush in and make mistakes. In almost every case, you have the luxury of time. Slow down and get it right. I advise thinking of news, all of it, as a suggestion of a possible reality. Think of a news article not as an end point but as a signpost along the way on your journey toward the truth.
• If no one else is reporting this story, ask yourself why. If you encounter a lone report that describes the opening of a new habitat featuring a live Bigfoot specimen at the San Diego Zoo or the invasion of South Korea by North Korean killer robots, chances are good that it's fake news. The absence of similar reports by multiples news organizations is a gigantic red flag. Cable news networks are hyperfocused on being fast. If they aren't reporting on a big story, it's probably because they figured out that it's unsupported by evidence or credible sources and unlikely to be true.
• Understand the difference between opinion and news. Many people don't recognize the fundamental difference between opinion or commentary and news. Straight news is about the hard facts of an event and may include direct quotes from an interview subject related to the topic. Commentary is an open arena where writers or broadcasters can express feelings, hunches, and opinions. Both are important, of course, but confusing one for the other can lead to problems.
• Check the URL carefully. Many fake news sites seek to fool people with a Web address that is similar to a legitimate news site. One common trick is the have a URL that is identical to a major news company except for a couple of extra letters at the end. For example, “.com.co” is not the same as “.com.” At a glance, for example, you might assume that ABCNews.com.co and BostonTribune.com are the Web addresses of real and respectable news organizations. But they aren't. Both specialize in publishing fake news articles. The first one has nothing to do with the ABC News most are familiar with, and the other is not the website of a respected Boston newspaper as one might assume.
• Don't spread garbage. Another significant problem is the habit many seem to have of sharing news links after doing nothing more than reading the headline. How can anyone intelligently assess an article without reading it first? About six in ten people, 59 percent, are guilty of this, according to a recent study.¹¹⁸ In 2016, a satirical site published an article with a catchy headline but gibberish for text. Nearly 46,000 people shared it.¹¹⁹

  Please don't do this! In many circumstances, sharing a news article implies an endorsement. Understand that headlines are there to catch the eye, provoke, and excite the mind; and they often are written by an editor, someone other than the person who wrote the article itself. As a result, headline and article do not always share a consistent theme and tone. Most troublesome, however, is that some fake news is designed to look credible at first glance. The lies only emerge somewhere down in the text. The headline may be intentionally written to make the bogus text below it seem respectable. Don't be an accomplice. If you can't bother to read the story and assess its accuracy, then don't share the story. Don't add fuel to a fire that already burns up too much invaluable intellectual capital. Spreading fake news drags us all down. The proliferation of propaganda and nonsense pushes us toward a coarser, more inefficient and dangerous world. When engaged on social media, strive to act in ways that uplift us and help make humankind wiser and more sensible.

• Videos lie, too. Fools say “seeing is believing.” The wise know that sometimes it goes the other way: “believing is seeing.” Our beliefs, as well as fears and hopes, color our perceptions. A devout UFO believer, for example, is more likely to watch a video of a light in the sky and “see” an alien spaceship, clear as day, with an alien crew member waving from one of the windows. A good skeptic, however, would likely see nothing more than a distant, blurry, unidentified light in the sky. This is because the skeptic would know to slow down, take it in with sharpened attention, and resist jumping to unjustified conclusions.

  The skill and vigilance needed to defend against fake news will become even more urgent in the near future as new technologies allow people to manipulate and create fake audio and video. This can be done now. The software already exists.120 And soon the public will have access to the necessary tools as well. When that happens, we are sure to be flooded with videos and soundbites of celebrities, politicians, and others doing and saying things they never did or said. Think of the problems this can lead to. Imagine a faked but convincing viral video of you—or of a world leader—making racist statements or calling for the extermination of poor people. If the current poor state of critical thinking doesn't improve, millions would believe it. We may soon find that literally nothing online can be trusted, no matter how real it appears. A time may come when only the reputation of those who produce and publish a video can be a reliable indicator of trustworthiness.

• Slow the flow. Part of the reason fake news has exploded on social media is that it is so easy for one to become fatigued or at least distracted and cognitively compromised by the never-ending avalanche of information. We don't have infinite cognitive energies. The best of us can be worn down to a point where we are more likely to believe nonsense and pass it on to others. An interesting study published in Nature Human Behaviour in 2017 revealed this effect, concluding that everyone is more vulnerable to falling for fake stories when the flow of news becomes too great to pay close-enough attention.¹²¹ In light of this, it may be a good idea to restrict the volume of your news exposure. Try to be selective. More is not better when it comes to making sensible assessments.
• Diversify your cognitive portfolio. Don't attempt to live on social media alone. Sure, there is great stuff out there, but much of it is nothing more than empty calories. Enrich your mental diet by broadening your horizons. Read books and magazines off-line, if only to make sure your brain can still do it. Have more conversations with people who are physically present with you. Take breaks from the Internet on a regular basis. A day or even a week away is unlikely to shatter your life. None of this makes you a Luddite. But it just might help make you an intellectually deeper, more well-rounded person—and someone less likely to fall for fake news.
• Remember who you are. We are primates, fresh off the African savannah, and as such we don't automatically do well at identifying irrational beliefs and fraudulent claims for what they are. Our brains, for all their glorious powers, are suckers for a good story, an exciting image, convenient lie, or just plain old gossip. We must pause and think so that we may give ourselves the best chance to make the right decision about what to believe. We must second-guess our own minds, as Nyhan reinforced: “Social media is tough. It's important for all of us to be aware of our limitations as human beings. We are all vulnerable to misinformation. It's hard to fact-check every single piece of news that comes across your view. So it's important to be cautious.”122

Awareness and consistent skepticism can keep us from being pulled down the fake news rabbit hole. Remember that any story that feels perfect or that you just need to be true because it supports something you believe in has an automatic advantage in your subconscious mind and puts your rational mind at a disadvantage. The mere hint of a “perfect story” has nudges you into a state of weakness. This is the precise moment when critical thinking skills and a commitment to skepticism can save you from cluttering your head with a lie and hoodwinking you into becoming an accomplice who shares and spreads fraud. Good thinking is all that stands between you and all of those fake news stories out there designed to make fools out of us.

Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer, is one of the world's most prominent skeptics and promoters of critical thinking. He is also the author of Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us; he had a lot to say about fake news in an e-mail exchange with me:

“Fake news” is a broad phrase covering anything from Internet hoaxes to rumors to propaganda. Though these categories vary widely in cause, intent, toxicity, and in other ways, the good news is that all of these varieties of “fake news” have the same antidote: skepticism and critical thinking. all of these variations can be stopped in their tracks by media-savvy citizens. Though the public love to blame the news media for misinformation—and deservedly so—they are less keen to see the culprit in the mirror. Many people, especially on social media, fail to recognize that they have become de facto news outlets through the stories and posts they share on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. Yes, the news media help spread myriad “fake news” stories—but they are gleefully aided by ordinary people like you and me.123

Radford says that although we cannot easily influence or control what a news organization, group, or individual publishes online, we can help by not sharing misleading information and posting propaganda. “It can be as simple as not forwarding, liking, or sharing that dubious news story, especially if it seems crafted to encourage social outrage, before checking the facts. It's too easy, especially in the heat of righteous indignation, to share and spread misinformation. If news organizations can't or won't take responsibility, we as netizens can take that power by refusing to be a conduit for these and other varieties of fake news—or, better yet, debunking it.”

FIGHTING BACK

John Pavley, senior vice president at the media conglomerate Viacom, believes Facebook can do a better job when it comes to fake news.¹²⁴ For starters, he says human editors should be in the loop. Algorithms don't exist that can consistently and accurately identify harmless satire, real news, and well-designed fake news—not yet. He also would like to see Facebook give users the option to “dislike” news in addition to “liking” it. Best of all, he recommends Facebook give users a mix of news they are likely to both agree with and disagree with. This is how confirmation bias can be held back a bit, if not tamed.

Pavley also points the finger of blame at each of us as well:

If you want to blame some modern phenomenon for the results of the 2016 presidential election, and not the people who didn't vote, or the flawed candidates, or the FBI shenanigans, then blame the trolls. You might think of the typical troll as a pimply-faced kid in his bedroom with the door locked and the window shades taped shut but those guys are angels compared to the real trolls: the general public. You and me.125

Pavley is correct, of course. Fake news only becomes a problem when enough people fail to apply a minimal amount of reason before passing it on to others. It seems at times that the unofficial mantra of social media today is, “Don't think, just share.”¹²⁶ This must change. Take some responsibility, both for yourself and for the state of social media. It's easy for us to kill fake news. All we need to do is think.

It is wise to carefully consider all proposed solutions to fake news. Some cures could be as bad as or worse than the original problem. Katherine Losse, an early Facebook employee who became Mark Zuckerberg's ghost writer, warns us about this potential issue in a blog post: “Technology companies could very well end up banishing ‘Fake News’ by moving to publish only news they create and approve, which creates a new monopoly on news and story creation. It is for this reason that as we head into a world dominated increasingly by centralized power, maintaining the ability to tell and write our own stories remains critical.”¹²⁷ Losse hits upon a critical challenge swirling around the issue of fake news. How do we encourage and preserve the ability of people, everyday people, to publish their ideas and share information on social media freely while still working to maintain acceptable levels of social and journalistic sanity? The answer to that, I suppose, is to find a way to convince everyone of the value of critical thinking so that creative lies and nonsense lose their viral potential.

“How can people be so stupid?” This is a sentiment several people expressed to me during discussions and interviews about the fake news phenomenon. I disagree strongly with the implication that a portion of humanity is hopelessly dim, and I worry that my analysis of fake news here may be misinterpreted by some as blanket condemnation of human brainpower. This is not the case. Nothing in this chapter or in the rest of this book is meant to suggest that humankind is stuck in an eternal loop of one mad belief after another. Perhaps we are, but I opt for optimism. The same half-crazed brain that leads us to believe in ghosts can think them away as well. I concede that we may struggle forever with delusions and irrational beliefs because of our brain's evolutionary history and resulting troublesome ways. But given our no-less-real capacity for skepticism and critical thinking, I believe that we can do better. It may not be natural or easy, but we are fully capable of becoming a more sensible species.

TOO BUSY TO RESEARCH IT? CHECK IN WITH THE FACT-CHECKERS

Sometimes we are too busy to play Sherlock Holmes and spend hours trying to track down some slippery detail in a news article to find out whether or not it's accurate. Fortunately, there are shortcuts available. Trustworthy fact-checker sites are ready and waiting to help you sort through the confusion. Snopes.com, founded by David Mikkelson in 1994, is the oldest and largest of such sites. This is a good place to make a quick visit when you hear or see something that seems questionable.

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) is an international fact-checkers site that was launched in 2015 (www.poynter.org/category/fact-checking). Hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the various organizations fact-check government leaders, news articles, and statements by major institutions and companies. They also provide training resources for other fact-checkers.

The human brain is routinely lauded for its intellectual and creative abilities. But its greatest power of all is that of flexibility, or neuroplasticity. We can learn new things throughout life, change our behaviors, and literally redesign our brains. We don't have to rely on instincts for everything. Humankind may never completely outgrow its silly ways, but we can always improve, learn from mistakes, do better next time, and chase wisdom at every turn. “We shamelessly yield to impulse and invent reasons afterward,” write Ellen and Michael Kaplan in their book, Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err Is Human.¹²⁸ They continue, “We impute motives to distant figures and events of which, despite the global wash of media, we really know almost nothing…. We allow others to impose on us with slippery rhetoric and bogus statistics. We cower from difficult truths and cry after comforting illusions. And yet, astonishingly, here we still are—the masters of creation. For idiots, we have been remarkably successful: our grand entrances may start on a banana peel, our sweeping exits lead into a closet, but we are the stars of this show.”

Skeptical Inquirer deputy editor Radford wants people to understand that some fake news can have deadly serious consequences. He cites a 2014 incident that occurred in Guarujá, a town near Brazil's largest city of Sao Paulo. Fabiane Maria de Jesus, aged thirty-three, was beaten to death by a mob because they thought she was a witch. Why did they think this?

“Maria de Jesus was suspected of being a witch because of a warning shared on social media,” Radford explains.129 He elaborates,

The Facebook page for a local tabloid-style news outlet spread an alert claiming that a woman had been seen abducting children for use in witchcraft. It's not clear how the news alert obtained information about the alleged witch's motivations, but a sketch of the supposed child abductor was included with the alert. Because Maria de Jesus looked vaguely like the child abductor, the mob suspected it was her. Administrators for the Facebook page later released a statement denying responsibility for the attack and stating that it had merely passed along the unfounded rumors as a public service and never explicitly claimed the child-abduction rumor was true…. When wild rumors are given credence through social media and accepted without question or evidence, the results can be tragic. It's something to keep in mind the next time you share, like, or tweet a sensational news item warning of some threat.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE WAR FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

Strive to make skepticism and critical thinking habitual, largely automatic, or subconscious reactions to your online encounters with news and other information. This won't make you invulnerable and incapable of making missteps, of course, but keeping your guard up, is key to living a safer and more efficient life. Do not forget for one second that you are under constant threat of intellectual assault from countless throngs of deluded believers pushing endless streams of baloney and madness. There also are countless profit-motivated, agenda-driven, and just plain dishonest companies and people who show up and work hard every day with the aim of fooling you for their own gain.

Do not allow yourself to be complacent about this challenge. Fake news matters. Even if you have it all figured out and don't think you can fall for the lies and hoaxes, you still live in this world with millions of other people who are eating it up every day. Delusions lead to danger. Idiocy might lead to the realization of Idiocracy,130 or worse. “Believe in truth,” urges Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University.¹³¹ “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”

Wouldn't it be a cruel irony if social media, created mostly by highly educated liberals in democratic society, ends up enabling dictators and anti-intellectual fascists of many flavors to take and hold power in nations around the world? I find some reason for hope and optimism amid the current explosion of fake news, however. There is a chance that people will be forced, after being suckered and exploited one too many times, to recognize and admit the obvious: We all must think before we believe. Maybe out of embarrassment or simple frustration, we will stop trusting every news story that thrills us, feels good, or otherwise feeds some deep desire. We will realize the need to be skeptical and cautious about all news. And that will be progress.