Virus Scares and False Authority Syndrome

Fifth of Five writes: "Ran across this article on the IS-IT-TRUE.org site regarding False Authority Syndrome and the spread of virus misinformation by the media, users and Folks Who Probably Ought To Know Better. If you've ever watched the TV news and gritted your teeth over what is being presented as 'fact' this may shine some light on just how it got to be like this."

Comments

You either walk the walk, or talk the talk ...

[LL]

People keep on forgetting that public media is in the attention business ... it is in their economic interest to sensationalise news in order to flog those accompanying ads (a bit of a problem for CNN when there's no major wars going on). As such, manufactured fluff (ie press-releases) is easier to regurgitate than any in-depth research or second-hand opinions (syndicated columns). Historically public media was part and parcel of the lecture circuit (aka rubber chicken show) where you would invite real authorities and experts to come in and air their thoughts in a proper interview. However, two general trends mitigate against this ... the increasing complexity of real-world issues (anyone who thinks Middle-East is a simple case of good-guys/bad-guys is in deep trouble) which limits the potential audiences interested in understanding the issues, and the move to tabloid style audience capture which tends to confuse celebrity with fame. Why should sports-heros and actresses (apart from the convenience of recycling pre-existing studio contracts) be ask to comment on areas way outside their domain? Why should TV shows get people from the entertainment field to present business news (and you wonder why the stock market is irrational). Unfortunately those with real knowhow gained from the school of hard knocks tend to be people who charge for their services ... would you want a surgeon who has never practised on patients before so why are we willing to listen to highly filtered news passed along by talking heads? It's becoming nothing more than a massive Chinese whisper in a global cocktail party.

Fortunately we have some countervailing examples ... the /. ask XYZ is a particularly good way for the plebs to touch some of the people involved in the thick of things.

LL

The economic models which are the equivalent of yelling "fire" as loudly as possible to rush people to newsfeeds are creating some really bad incentives ... ultimately people have to realise there is a cost in misleading/diluted information (e.g. did anyone notice that the bard-wire concentration camp story that helped sparked the Balkans intervention and sundry bombings was filmed on the inside looking out?).

It's a pain, but...

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I must get warnings for "Wobbler" and "All Seeing Eye" sent to me by my [L]users all the time, but you know what? It's a fair cop.

I set up filters, I block the sending and receiving of all .vbs files, I warn. And most of all, I know that many here will cringe when they read this, I actively encourage my [L]users to forward me all the warnings they get sent to them.

Know why? After the 4th one I send back to them with an URL and a "Thanks, but that one was a hoax", they start to catch on (well... many of them do). Some also start to forward any and all messages with attached files to me if they weren't expecting them. Again, many here may cringe, my email box is huge and I spend hours each day weeding through false alarms sometimes. But IMHO it's worth it.

Do you know how many actual FULL outbreaks this company has seen in the last year? One. Back in November of last year. It was Navidad and it was sent to a Hispanic employee (the CFO actually... hehehehe) from a relative, and since it was near Xmas, well, I forgave him. AFTER I made HIM clean out his own machine and then lambasted him in front of the entire company. But when people first saw the SIRCAM virus come in, even users who had not read my warnings yet spotted it instantly and sent it to me. This was before I'd set our mail server to send all messages with "I hope you like the file that I sendo you" in the body to /dev/null.

All things considered, though, seeing as this office is almost entirely Windows, I think my methods work. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it can be annoying. BUT, I rarely have to restore from backup, and we haven't had any major outbreaks.