{"id":4053,"date":"2017-11-21T10:54:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T09:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amdf-centre.org\/?p=4053"},"modified":"2026-07-05T20:06:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T19:06:52","slug":"fighting-fake-news-by-the-time-it-reaches-your-social-media-feed-its-too-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amdf-centre.org\/2017\/11\/21\/fighting-fake-news-by-the-time-it-reaches-your-social-media-feed-its-too-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting fake news: by the time it reaches your social media feed, it\u2019s too late"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ryan, Strupp and Bump speak at a Hacks\/Hackers DC panel<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Last year, Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was killed as he walked to his home in Washington\u2019s Bloomingdale neighborhood. The 27-year-old was shot several times before police arrived at the scene, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.<\/p>\n

While his murder remains unsolved, his family and local police believe his death was the tragic \u00a0result of a botched robbery.<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theorists on the internet, however, believe his murder was ordered by Hillary Clinton as payback for Rich\u2019s leaking DNC emails to WikiLeaks, a theory\u00a0debunked<\/a>\u00a0by many news outlets as untrue.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we were getting more and more news about Russia and the investigation, right-wing media became obsessed unexplainably with Seth Rich for about a month,\u201d said\u00a0Melissa Ryan<\/a>, editor ofCtrl Alt Right Delete<\/a>, a newsletter that tracks alt-right activities online and offers tools to fight back. Ryan, a digital campaign strategist and organizer, spoke at a\u00a0Hacks\/Hackers DC event<\/a>Oct. 18 on fighting fake news, along with The Washington Post\u2019s\u00a0Philip Bump<\/a>\u00a0and iStrategyLabs\u2019\u00a0Josh Strupp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rich\u2019s story is just one recent examples of how fake news and misinformation spread online. \u201cOne of the biggest misconceptions people have about fake news still is that it\u2019s just something that shows up on your news feed one day. We really have to start thinking of it as a weapon that hostile actors are using,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n

An example of this is how the alt-right creates misinformation campaigns and unleashes them on social media, she said. These alternative narratives \u2014 like the Seth Rich conspiracy theory \u2014 are purposefully constructed and spread with the goal of getting them out very quickly. They start on 4chan and 8chan (online imageboard forums), spread to the_donald subreddit and other chat rooms and then to the rest of the internet. \u201cWe are not going to fact-check our way out of this problem,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n

The best way to fight against fake news is to use tools to monitor these chat rooms and stop the misinformation before it spreads. \u201cThe more I learn about studies about why people believe fake news and conspiracy theories, by the time it reaches your uncle\u2019s Facebook feed, it\u2019s too late,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n

Adding more context to Trump\u2019s tweets.<\/h4>\n

Twitter, the 21st-century newswire, is also rife with misinformation.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the president\u2019s use of social media, \u201cDonald Trump, more so than most politicians, has used that ability to speak to a big population to his own desired end, which is often misinformation and falsehood,\u201d said Bump, a national correspondent for The Washington Post and former designer at Adobe. His Chrome and Firefox extension, \u201cRealDonaldContext<\/a>,\u201d is \u201can attempt to wrap what Donald Trump is sending out into the world in some added context, to interject a little bit of objectivity into what it is that he\u2019s trying to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Chrome extension uses JavaScript to call a JSON file with the unique ID of the tweet in question, flags it either as false or in need of more context and churns out the actual copy of the correction and a link to more information if necessary, all in real time..<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s no way to do it automatically,\u201d Bump said, because it\u2019s hard to develop a bot that would recognize the particular untrue thing President Trump is saying and reply to it. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to keep up with it\u2026. Donald Trump would tweet eight things a day, and six of them would require additional context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if a tool like his should be baked into Twitter, Bump said he wasn\u2019t sure. \u201cPeople share all sorts of garbage [online],\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no good solution. … I don\u2019t know if it makes sense for Twitter to do it, but I think it makes sense for somehow there to be additional context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fake News: the Game<\/h4>\n

Can people be taught to spot fake news? That\u2019s what \u201cFake News: the Game<\/a>\u201d is trying to accomplish. With an 8-bit look and feel, the app pulls in fake and real headlines grabbed from fact-checking sites such as\u00a0Snopes<\/a>,\u00a0Politifact<\/a>\u00a0and from the\u00a0Not the Onion subreddit<\/a>. Players are presented with a series of headlines and must guess which ones are fake or real by swiping left or right. The more headlines players guess right in 60 seconds, the higher the score.<\/p>\n

The headlines are entered manually into a database. Players can look at the sources at the end of the game, which can help them decide what to trust.<\/p>\n

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The game has been played about 7,000 times. iStrategyLab\u2019s Strupp, who worked on the app as a project manager, found that a person\u2019s score improves dramatically the more they play, adding that most users get more than half of the fake headlines wrong on their first play.<\/p>\n

Even though technology can help educate news consumers, Strupp acknowledged there are limitations in using tech to solve this problem. \u201cNo matter what technological innovation we come up with, there\u2019s going to be some sort of loophole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Main photo courtesy of George LeVines<\/em><\/p>\n

Secondary photo screenshot of\u00a0RealDonaldContext. Third photo screenshot of “Fake News: The Game.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n