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.

Our domain of knowledge

[feed_me_cereal]

Being knowledgable of technical stuff like "what viruses can really do" is the specific domain of knowledge we slashdot readers have. This makes me wonder, not being an expert on many other things, just how much mis-information is propagated through the news. I never watch the news anymore. All you see are disaster reports and attempts to make 40-year-old, middle-class americans paranoid of something.

Possible TV News Headlines:

• 10 reasons music will turn your kid into a raging homicidal maniac!
• Is your home safe? (probably, if you don't live in the slums, which you probably dont)
• Will hackers delete your life? (and you thought stupidity existed only in movies)
• What are your kids doing after school? (What are your kids doing IN school? Learning how to cheat a proficiency test, getting harrassed by morons (young and old), and then smoking pot.)
• Why environmentalists are crackpots (or how to think comfortably and incorectly)

Google Cache of Pages.

[Chmarr]

Here's links to google's cache of all pages:

Page 1
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Authority is effective

[Have Blue]

Before anyone posts some rant along the lines of ["They should have been smarter"|"They should have known better"|"Why are people so stupid as to fall for this all the time"], they should read this essay on Milgram's studies of authority. It's frightening.

I called that number!!

[Gregoyle]

I don't know if that mail still has the woman's phone number at the end, but when I got it, it did.

The number was at Los Alamos national laboratory, and I decided that with my shiny new cell-phone with free long distance I would call the number.

Haha, much to my surprise, the woman picked up the phone, and I asked her if the email was true. She said it was and asked me to take the number off the mail if I sent it to anyone, because ever since that mail had gone out her phone had been ringing off the hook.

ultracrepidarian

[rkischuk]

On the same page:

ultracrepidarian: (n., adj.) a person who gives opinions beyond his scope of knowledge.

I'll have to add this to my top ten words to use when talking over somebody's head.

Re:ultracrepidarian

[scoove]

Ditto! I'm so used to reporters getting it wrong (from interviews I've had) that I seriously doubt anything these critters put out.

In case you're ever the recepient of a reporter's questions, here are a few recommendations for your survival:

- if it is "off the record," then don't say it. Off the record is reporter code for "this will be really juicy stuff to print, but I'll have to slightly reword it."

- if it involves a competitor or other antagonist, don't say it (reporters have a field day on creating any emotional tension, e.g. making you out to be a fool)

- if it is not for release now, keep your trap shut and only mention it when it is for release. Reporters survive by getting new stories out and their loyalty to their editor (and interest in keeping their job) is greater than their loyalty to you.

- if it is at all technical, give them a written release and limit the story to that. If you absolutely must be interviewed beyond the release, give them 10 minutes, give them a couple of soundbytes that you've pre-prepared, and refer everything else to the release.

- and if you're the boss, tell your employees that speaking to the press is voluntary resignation (e.g. nobody does it except you).

This will help you survive these critters.

*scoove*

Hmm

[Adam9]

Does the False Authority Syndrome include accepting Slashdot stories as fact too?

It works the other way, too:

[Bonker]

A few days ago, I was involved in a conversation with a computer neophyte after I had been off the net for a few days.

She told me she had heard of a new CD format that was supposed to copy-protect CD's by making them damage your stereo speakers.

Knowing quite a bit about the Red-book standard, I told her that such a format was impossible and that it was almost certainly a hoax.

Once I got back on the net and read about the Macro-vision scheme now in use in thousands of CD's, I had to call her and tell her that I was mistaken.

You know what they say...

[Nugget]

"The media is always accurate, except when they're talking about things I know."

It's always a source of amazement to me how many people are capable of maintaining this perspective towards the media. I always try to think back to every single teeth-grinding, knee-gripping instance of media inaccuracy in a tech story whenever I'm exposed to a story on a subject on a topic which is unfamiliar to me.

Repeat after me: "Reporters are idiots"

[sjbe]

No, not all reporters are. Just most of them. Most of the reporters I've met are little more than a talking hair-do and are fascinated by anything with blinking lights even though they almost never comprehend anything you tell them. You can just watch anything you tell them go in one ear and out the other.

Why do I say this? I work in a tech center. We do a lot of nifty complicated work usually involving a lot of computers and/or math. It's neat stuff, but not that hard to understand what it is even if you don't understand the details of it. (part prototyping, databases, 3d computer graphics, etc) Because of the kind of work we do, we are something of a showpiece for the company. We get reporters and TV crews coming through all the time. The visits usually go something like this:

Us: Here's this nifty complicated new piece of equipment that is going to help us make widgets faster, better and cheaper.

Then: Uh-huh. Can you turn the lights in the room down and stand over by the blinking lights? We need a picture.

Us: But those lights are the air conditioning system.

Them: Yeah but it looks cool and I didn't understand a word you said anyway.

They also have this peculiar fascination with taking pictures in low light conditions with glowing things. My wife worked in a lab where they used radioactive chemical markers for testing. They wanted to turn the lights down to get a picture of the spectrometer (which wasn't even in use) while showing someone handling radioactive chemicals in the dark. Very safe...

Needless to say, I don't watch the evening news anymore...

Slashdotted - copy here

[Placido]

I love you google cache!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:ahVwga1Oq1o :www.vmyths.com/fas/fas1.cfm+&hl=en (remove the space that /. so helpfully adds. ;)