What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong?

New submitter cornicefire writes "By now most people have heard the news and seen the picture of the boy who was killed over the new Nike sneakers. There are Facebook pages devoted to fist-shaking protests about materialism and greed. Yada yada yada. But while the scuffles over the shoes were real, the death was not. The photo was just a stock photo of some kid in a lab. We know this because of some old school reporters — Steve Earley and Justin Fentin of the Baltimore Sun. In the rush to celebrate crowdsourcing, many of us pooh-pooh the old media as 'gatekeepers,' but there are times when keeping that gate locked is a good idea. After all, if one of the crowd discovered the error, the signal would barely rise above the noise. There are people claiming that anyone questioning the facts is being disrespectful. Is there something we can do about the mobocracy? How can we support the best traditions of journalism while fixing the worst? How can we nurture accuracy?"

Comments

Nurturing accuracy

[colinrichardday]

Nurturing accuracy will require a cultural change, from our schools up.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[__aagujc9792]

Well, there used to be this thing call "journalism". See, first you make up a story that Advances The Narrative, then you create evidence for it (in a font that wasn't invented at the time it was supposed to happen), and then you're Dan Rather. Truthiness rules!

Snark aside, the rules of the Old Journalism worked moderately well when they were followed. I think our current chaotic information pool will improve in quality as honest brokers of info bundling and verification services emerge and thus develop a reputation. Which will make them powerful, and interesting targets for corruption... Big wheel keeps on turnin'.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[CharlyFoxtrot]

That's true and not only of the "internet mob." Traditional media, with a few exceptions, have also gone this route of going with sensational hot news without fact checking and then burying corrections later. The only difference is that the masses read the internet (or at least the channels through which news reaches them such as Facebook) and that news spreads instantaneously instead of over a couple of days.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[colinrichardday]

I think our current chaotic information pool will improve in quality as honest brokers of info bundling and verification services emerge and thus develop a reputation.

Developing such a reputation only matters if people want accurate information.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[Jhon]

Remember "Memo Gate"?

Maybe the "crowd" is better at keeping things accurate than reporting them accurately?

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[Rockoon]

Its not just sensational news.

The modern media is He Said, She Said. Instead of investigative journalism and getting to the bottom of the story, all they do is tell you what people (such as politicians) are saying.

Name the media outlet that managed to inform us that in 2000, when credit default swaps were being deregulated, that the House vote for deregulation went 292 to 60:

133 to 51 on the Republican side.
157 to 9 on the Democrat side.

Instead of reporting that (simple to find facts), they cut to a sound-bites of either (a) Democrats blaming the Republicans or (b) Republicans defending themselves from the accusation.

Stop listening to them. Start watching them. You can't watch with the television on, because thats just listening to what they are saying rather than watching what they are doing.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[colinrichardday]

What about people who value what they consider to be integrity over accuracy, such as those who consider maintaining their beliefs to be more important those beliefs actually being correct?

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[miserere nobis]

I think our current chaotic information pool will improve in quality as honest brokers of info bundling and verification services emerge and thus develop a reputation.

I have been hoping for this outcome, but there is a lot of reason to believe it is unlikely. One reason is that, when it comes to mass social media-developed stories, the brokers are everyone, and honest news sources can be overwhelmed and lost in the noise. To prevent this, every person has to regard him- or herself as a journalist with an obligation to check things before posting them, tweeting them, or otherwise passing them along. Given how well this has worked with all of the incredibly unbelievable urban legends that continue to be propagated via email despite easy fact checking, I have a feeling a lot more people find it easier to click "share" than to take time to look something up carefully.

The other reason I worry about this is that reputations themselves hold value and therefore are regularly sold off just like any other assets. How many companies are there that have developed a reputation for high quality, over many years, and then someone realized that if they put the same brand name on a lesser product, they could sell more of it at lesser cost. Sure, it diminishes the brand, but that takes time, and the profits are immediate. Furthermore, our culture (at least in the U.S.) has gradually devalued actual honesty (the foundation of a reputation) in favor of branding (the imagery of a reputation). Most troubling, personal honesty itself is not considered important. What is a paid endorsement, really? It is putting up your reputation for sale. Yet this is accepted without question as the best way to cash in on one's status as a trusted person. To see this in action out in the masses, how many bloggers, after building up a following, begin accepting "sponsored posts"? Vast numbers of them, and many have probably never even realized there is a moral dimension to this at all, it's just a way to earn money. If they have thought about it, they probably have never taken it seriously enough to actually refuse to do it, because looking at it as a form of dishonesty would be a "fringe" view in our present culture, and therefore easily dismissed regardless of its accuracy. So what I worry about is that, unless we somehow foster an actual cultural change, we'll wind up with just a continued bombardment of unchecked "facts" mixed with an endless succession of people and institutions that build up a trusted reputation and then cash out.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[realityimpaired]

With few exceptions, yes. And I think it's telling that the most prominent of those few exceptions is one of the only 24hr News channels that you can't get in the US: Al-Jazeera.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[InlawBiker]

Slashdot itself is guilty of promoting unfounded blog posts/rumors as news, practically every day. For profit. Journalism is on life support.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[vAltyR]

Maintaining your beliefs whether or not they are correct is not integrity; it's simply stubbornness. Integrity includes being able to admit you were wrong before, which is seems to be looked down on in our society; consider how many politicians have been accused of "flip-flopping" on a controversial subject.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[rev0lt]

The news don't come only from agency reports. Most newspapers and TV channels have their own reporters doing hum, "investigative" journalism. More often than not, most of this "investigative" journalism follows the guidelines of whoever is writing the checks instead of a code of conduct.
What amuses me is people thinking that this is somewhat a "new media" problem. Go check newspapers from a century ago, and you'll see that the problem was far far worse back then, and that we have access not only to the news, but to several sources and routes to confirm its accuracy and truthfulness (as it happened in this case) - not that most people bother with fact-checking.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[khallow]

Maintaining your beliefs whether or not they are correct is not integrity

We're not the ones that need the semantics lesson. And it's not going to stick to the ones that do.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

We have another, connected issue at hand here, that is not necessarily related the belief itself being wrong.

That is: When one firmly believes in something, and then authoritatively props up specious claims that clearly and powerfully support the belief, despite a full awareness of said speciousness (or even outright wrongness). Again, in this case, it is not the belief that is necessarily wrong (though it may be), but a morality-on-hold attitude that the means of disseminating misinformation, or poorly vetted information, justify the end of making their possibly-correct belief more persuasive. This can breed unintended collateral damage if presumed truth of the supporting information proves injurious in other contexts.

I agree with the poster that emphasized the importance of teaching children critical thinking from a very early age. If we fancy our own longevity as a species, it is imperative that average people be equipped to follow these obscure bunny trails of the mind and not rely upon stronger, louder thinkers to cast their votes for them.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[inviolet]

Maintaining your beliefs whether or not they are correct is not integrity; it's simply stubbornness. Integrity includes being able to admit you were wrong before, which is seems to be looked down on in our society; consider how many politicians have been accused of "flip-flopping" on a controversial subject.

The problem with this simplification is that it is rarely obvious that one's belief is incorrect.

Certainly, we may encounter a piece of data or an anecdote that appears to contradict our belief... but the new bit of information is rarely the whole story, especially these days when we are only ever told half the story. (The whole story is rarely sensational, whereas half the story makes the subject's decisions seem unwise or "it's just crazy".) When I hear that someone clings to their belief even in the face of a new piece of data, I consider it as likely as not that the believer is simply being appropriately cynical, living as he does in a world of venal liars.

As well, there is a time horizon issue. What we call "beliefs" are often really general principles that predict long-term outcomes. These principles often produce short-term damages, which are then thrown in the believer's face as evidence that his principles are wrong. But that's usually just a disagreement over time horizons. Just look at the arguments for and against the Iraq occupation.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[makomk]

It's not hard to find examples of Fox News dishonesty - for example, take this graph that's been carefully distorted to make it look like unemployment increased when it actually decreased as a way of attacking Obama - but the individual examples are beside the point. The problem is the pattern of behaviour they show.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[theCoder]

But interestingly enough, when that happens, some of the highest rated comments are "no that's wrong and here's why..."

Anytime I see an sensationalist /. article, I always check the comments to find out how accurate it is. But I suppose not everyone does that, and most Internet sites don't have as good a commenting system as /.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[webgovernor]

Why is it that in every instance which someone dislikes FOX for their political bending, we immediately assume that person is a "lefty" or democrat?

I find that I tend to lean slightly republican, yet I absolutely despise the multitude of instances where FOX has slanted data, even if it is in my political favor. The graph example posted by makomk is an excellent example of this.

This relates to the topic at hand: the lack of critical thinking. Is it that our vast ability to make erroneous assumptions leads to misinformation? I'd argue that many differences can be settled by calmly discussing them, and casting aside the fervor of our own belief systems.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[colinrichardday]

No, but it is evidence of shoddiness.

As for conspiracy

Described by fellow Bush aide Lee Atwater as having "two speeds--attack and destroy," Ailes once jocularly told a Time reporter (8/22/88): "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Later, as a producer for Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show, he was fond of calling Bill Clinton the "hippie president" and lashing out at "liberal bigots" (Washington Times, 5/11/93). It is these two sensibilities above all--right-wing talk radio and below-the-belt political campaigning--that Ailes brought with him to Fox, and his stamp is evident in all aspects of the network's programming.

From http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[__aagujc9792]

Over a period of decades, a brand can cultivate a reputation for fairness and accuracy, and thereby develop a very valuable property. But proud brands fall on hard times, and wind up in the hands of MBAs who know how to mine the residual value as they (as a direct result) become completely worthless. HP, anyone?

In the end caveat emptor rules. That said, the formal study of rhetoric as a branch of logic is very helpful in diagnosing the quality of arguments. And anyone who disagrees with me is a big fat (ad hominem) meanie, and I'll punch (ad baculam) them right in the lip if they don't shut up. And I hope you'll forgive my (appeal to sympathy) if I indulge in a completely worthless (argumentum ad verecundiam) display of obsolete erudition tokens in hopes of bolstering my argument...

Honestly though, "I see what you did there" is a much funner reaction to bafflegab than "hunh?". As someone once more or less said, you can't be ignorant and free. Keep your powder dry, I hear there're Sophists at large...

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[epyT-R]

the way to deal with this is to not place belief on a pedestal which is something that our culture teaches starting around age 5. The other is to get into the habit of questioning assumptions we make. the enoch-post is dead on. this needs to be taught in kindergarten through college.

The problem is that the long term outcomes can be wrong too, but the believer has an emotional reason for believing as he does and doesn't want to let go. it can also be that the believer sees the short term 'proof' while failing to see the long term fallacy. also, just because a belief proves true doesn't mean the reason for the occurrence is what the believer thinks it is. for example, a believer might pray to his god for rain, and it rains later in the day. this does not prove his belief that god exists or that praying brings rain. he just believes it does. since belief is worshiped in our culture, it makes a virtue out of refusing to rationalize conclusions. this id dangerous for any free society as it allows such minds to be manipulated by those in charge.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[khallow]

But it usually is the case that it is ibvious that one's belief is either unsupported or capable of falsification.

I don't buy that myself. Sky god beliefs, superstitions, and such only make up a small portion of beliefs. When you get to the more numerous arguments about morality and ethics, what we should and shouldn't do, even those with supernatural beliefs tend to try to come up with natural explanations for why things should be done certain ways.

Then there's beliefs about how things work and happen. While there actually was a school of belief that birds flew and water boiled solely through the will of Allah, in general people don't look to the supernatural to explain why everyday things are the way they are.

Re:Nurturing accuracy

[Hatta]

As well, there is a time horizon issue. What we call "beliefs" are often really general principles that predict long-term outcomes. These principles often produce short-term damages, which are then thrown in the believer's face as evidence that his principles are wrong. But that's usually just a disagreement over time horizons. Just look at the arguments for and against the Iraq occupation.

?

The Iraq war was sold to the American people on the basis that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the US. They were wrong on the short term, there was simply no reason to believe (besides the paranoid fantasies of neoconservatives) that Saddam Hussein was preparing any sort of attack. They were wrong on the long term too, 9 years of war cost us more in lives and treasure than the 9/11 attacks.

There is no reasonable difference of opinion when it comes to the Iraq war. The hawks were simply power hungry, vengeful, and completely uninterested in realistic appraisals of the situation. The anti-war crowd were right then, and they have been proven correct about what a long, painful, and pointless struggle the neocons chose for us.

How un American of you

[Colin Smith]

You should be out selling them hot dogs. That's what mobs are for.
 

Re:How un American of you

[The Mighty Buzzard]

It's an Internet mob, remember? You should be selling them herbal V1agr4 instead.

Not much to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a similar event earlier this year near where I live. A kid, in that case, did die. Everyone thought the lad had over-dosed and died and the followed two weeks were a blur of cries for tougher drug control, better drug programs, editorials on how irresponsible youth are, etc etc etc. But a few of us, having read the report, noted the cause of death probably wasn't really drug related and the autopsy confirmed this. However no one wanted to hear it. Any comment about what really happened was shouted down in the anti-drug fervor.

There isn't much you can do against a mob, even one which is obviously wrong. Just wait it out and quietly try to educate people one at a time I suppose.

Re:Not much to be done

[Richard_at_work]

Equally, the MMR-causes-autism outcry a few years ago - the report had long been discredited, but for some reason it suddenly became a huge thing for many groups, causing massive public anger.

Same goes for the recent UEA climategate - nothing the scientists did was wrong, everything in the emails was almost deliberately taken out of context and much hilarity ensued.

Re:Not much to be done

[cheekyjohnson]

Isn't allowing your emotions to control you great? You should do it all the time (especially when thinking about the children)!

Re:Not much to be done

[fermion]

I was thinking that this is typical of any situation where someone wants to believe something that conflicts with known fact. Such mob delusion predates any technology one wants to name. We see it with the consistent denial that some preist were systematically having sexual relations with minors and some higher up in the Church were sanctioning such relations. Typically the primarily method to quash such facts that are inconsistent with desired truth is to call them 'disrespectful'. I would say that using 'disrespectful' instead of 'unsupportive by reality' is a surely indicative that the facts are reality, and the desired truth is delusional.

Re:Not much to be done

[khallow]

Another American who somehow manages to say with a straight face that they have something to teach the world about decency and reason.

Or we could be like you and just run our mouth. I bet that works great.

type of human who uses and believes social media

[rubycodez]

the people who immerse themselves in social media, who believe rumors without question, who only worry about other's opinions and so are easily swayed, are just dumber than sack of shit regardless of how high their IQ. Over half the populace is like that, very scary

Subscribe to regulated integrity

[__aasehi2499]

Your local newspaper is regulated by law to check it's sources and it's facts before printing.

Re:Subscribe to regulated integrity

[CharlyFoxtrot]

You should read "Flat Earth News", it offers a wonderful glimpse into the world of reporting and news agencies like Reuters and what passes for fact checking there.

Public relations stunt?

[jonbryce]

Looks very much like a PR stunt from Nike to me, to get out the message "our shoes are so good that people are fighting and killing each other to get them".

Was Nike behind this?

[Animats]

The real issue is whether Nike was behind the hype. Nike isn't that cool any more, and Michael Jordan is a has-been jock. They're the parties that would benefit from this. Follow the money.

Re:Was Nike behind this?

[honestmonkey]

YEAH! NIKE WAS BEHIND THIS! LET'S ALL GO GET THEM!

I've got a batch of torches and pitchforks here I'll sell you all real cheap.

Re:Was Nike behind this?

[metalmaster]

Whether Nike was behind the hype or not is moot. The fact is they drummed up enough chaos to make their product relevant again. That's marketing, and somebody has to do it.

Jordan a has-been? Maybe.....Jordan an Icon? Certainly. This is 'merica and we celebrate our sports heroes damnit! You dont have to be an avid sports fan to know names like Babe Ruth, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky or Joe Frazier and what they've done in their respective sports to become household names.

the answer is clear

[Trepidity]

Rustle up an internet mob to punish this despicable lack of accuracy!

Reputation and meta-moderation

[b4dc0d3r]

People who have been proven right time after time, such as Snopes or the Bad Astronomy guy, are frequently cited as rebuttals.

Having an internet-wide identity, such as Open ID (and specifically not FaceBook or a government supplied ID), allowing people to gain reputation, and override other peoples' posts, or at least be placed higher, is really the only way to do this everywhere.

Just as with slashdot moderation, it will be possible to game the system, if you respond rationally everywhere except one issue where you feel strongly about. And it would be nice if your reputation could be classified so that you can have a good reputation on some subjects, but automatically junkpiled on other topics.

As it stands, fact checkers who don't have an axe to grind are the only voices of reason, and you basically have to educate people about the fact checker being cited, but not so much that it looks like you are unquestioning of their lack of bias.

Making the internet personal again, so you are talking with actual people (virtually, not their real identities necessarily). Not arguing with text on a page.

Re:Reputation and meta-moderation

[Richard_at_work]

Just as with slashdot moderation, it will be possible to game the system, if you respond rationally everywhere except one issue where you feel strongly about. And it would be nice if your reputation could be classified so that you can have a good reputation on some subjects, but automatically junkpiled on other topics.

The problem with that, which is also the main problem with slashdots moderation system, is that it largely depends on the group of people taking part in the moderation, and it completely depends on their opinions. You can be completely rational on topics, backed with facts, and still be modded to oblivion because other people simply don't like your view, it isn't what they want to hear.

Many topics on slashdot suffer from such, including copyright issues, negative views on android etc.

Just because you have a good or bad reputation with one group doesn't mean that reputation is automatically of value to anyone else.

Re:Reputation and meta-moderation

[Vellmont]

People who have been proven right time after time, such as Snopes or the Bad Astronomy guy, are frequently cited as rebuttals.

Snopes indeed has a very good, and well deserved reputation. But yet I still hear people relatively intelligent people repeating the Cruise Control in a Winnebago lawsuit myth, or the Stella McDonald's spilled hot coffee half-truth. Both of those claims are more than a decade old, and very easily shown to be completely wrong. Yet people STILL tell these stories as if they were true.

The problem isn't one of lack of accurate authorities, or the social proof of the accurate authority. The problem is that people are far too willing to accept a story, passed down umpteen times that generally came from their friend, family member or acquaintance. The friend offers the social proof, because the friend believes the story and you trust the friend. Scepticism, or asking for evidence doesn't come into it, since that would involve doubting the friend.

The truth about the myths travels much more slowly, primarily because there's little punch to be gained from telling a story about how something turned out to be wrong. The mythos stories have great explanatory, validation, or "gee whiz cool" embedded within them. I.e. "blame it on those damn lawyers!", or the egg standing up during the equinox myth. One of my favourites, (that many very well educated people will argue with me about openly) is that silica glass is actually a liquid that flows at room temperature, and that's why old windows are thicker at the bottom. In case you didn't know, window glass used to be made through a process that made it thicker at one end, which was usually installed thick end down. I've also read through umpteen scientific evidence about glass, and silica glass is defined as an amorphous solid, that doesn't observably flow at room temperature.

It's OK. someone in the hood will be killed for em

[captainkoloth]

Even if this story is false, the sheer amount of violence over Air Jordan's over the years has been staggering. I remember as a kid living in a rust belted inner city and there were people shot and robbed of their Shoes.

Follower Count Matters

[LostCluster]

Astroturfers are easy to spot... they have a high follow count but a low follower count. Nike needs to get better advertising staff... just jamming twitter/facebook updates with their ad may lose more customers than it gains.

"Dewey Defeats Truman", Chicago Tribune, 1948

[perpenso]

The rush to get a story out first is hardly anything new, nor is the inevitable occasional false reporting. "Dewey Defeats Truman", Chicago Tribune, 1948. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman.

Re:"Dewey Defeats Truman", Chicago Tribune, 1948

[Anonymous Coward]

For the Chicago Tribune, they wanted to beat publishing deadline. So they made two articles in advance and were just waiting to hit the button. Wrong button was hit. As I recall, CNN also has pre-made obituaries of celebrities and head of states so all they have to do is tweak the date of death and hit publish in 10 minutes.

What's different in this Nike-murder story is that it borrows from facts and the rest is fabricated. It's like saying "Truman defeats Dewey but is Abducted by Aliens."

Also, newspapers publish corrections and/or apologizes the next day. Blogs can simply close shop and start anew an hour later - there's no accountability.

Re:"Dewey Defeats Truman", Chicago Tribune, 1948

[iluvcapra]

In 1948, a newspaper getting a headline wrong was literally an historic, once-in-a-decade happenstance that people still joke about. Social media getting its headline wrong isn't usually funny, because it happens daily.

Speaking of old newspaper men, people who believe in social media should really read some H. L. Menken, who would probably call the whole project "news-by-boob-boisie" and could point to examples of social media (also known as "gossip") as a major dissemination medium for racial hatred, propaganda and authoritarian-mediated ignorance.

What do we do? Think for yourself.

[Torodung]

What do we do about this? Wrong idea. Each one of us does something about it individually. You think for yourself; you vet things yourself; you don't worry about the rest of the "crowd" and how they might be deceived. Evolution only has you socially rigged up to truly affect about 150 people, max, anyway.

But, if everyone carries out that solemn responsibility, things will be fine. Problem is, because of a lingering reliance on big media, most people don't. And it was a serious problem back in the days before crowdsourcing too, because the "gatekeepers" have told some whoppers over the last century or so. This was especially true around the time of Goebbels and WW II, and it has never recovered since, despite all the best intentions of journalistic integrity. The journalists did their best to hold the lie machines at bay, but that time has long since passed. A few decades ago, by my reckoning.

So, the horse has been out of the barn for at least that long, and we are talking about shutting the gate? Now? What the hell, folks? Mass media is a lie machine, and it functions because it is a lie machine, and all we've done is given the keys to the lie machine to everyone, instead of only the "gatekeepers." That, by my yardstick, is a profoundly good thing, although it will take a period of adjustment to become used to it.

Personal responsibility and a ready supply of grains of salt is all we have left. Don't believe everything you read. Since CGI advances, don't believe everything you see either. Welcome to the Brave New World. IMHO, it's a "good thing," but you have to be careful what you choose to believe these days.

Flip side...

[Lord Dreamshaper]

Flip side of the coin is the "old guard" burying stories because it doesn't serve their corporate masters and/or because the truth about a news story isn't sensational or lurid enough. Old journalism used to be relatively honest, because lets face it, there's always been plenty of corrupt/stupid/greedy corporations/politicians/public figures, and exposing them was sensational enough to sell copy without sacrificing integrity. That integrity can no longer be assumed and so "old" journalism has just as much upside & downside as "new" journalism. It's up to us to learn to separate the signal from noise when the name of the game is to bury us in noise.

Sensationalism.

[MrCrassic]

How can newspapers prioritise accuracy and fairness when its patrons prioritise sensationalism and shock? The fact that nuances in the lives of celebrities can, at times, be more valuable to people than current events around them pronounces this. This element of our society needs to change first before we can begin talking about ways of nurturing accuracy.

Mob rule, groupthink

[macraig]

Welcome to sociopolitical science 101. This behavior is called tyranny of the majority, and it so worried Thomas Jefferson and others who founded the United States that they crafted a new variant of democracy intended to discourage it. At least in politics....

Re:Mob rule, groupthink

[Surt]

Sadly, all they wound up with was a new form of tyranny of the minority.

Not believing everything your read

[perpenso]

Nurturing accuracy will require a cultural change, from our schools up.

Perhaps it is more important to teach not believing everything that you read. Especially on the internet where there is little barrier to being published.

To instill some sort of ability to judge credibility. For example, two people make conflicting medical claims. One is an unknown but licensed medical doctor who trained at a well regarded university and the other is a famous and popular actress. That the actress' lack of relative credibility would require extraordinary evidence of her claims.

Re:Not believing everything your read

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Perhaps it is more important to teach not believing everything that you read.

Critical thinking is the most important thing school can teach a person.
Unfortunately it seems to get pretty short shrift in much of the curriculum.

Re:Not believing everything your read

[Rockoon]

How do we get them to do this?

First you need to get them to shut up. Seriously. As long as they are talking, they have every incentive to not figure out that what they are saying is wrong.

The thing about humans is that they rationalize, even wrongly. Point out that the facts dont jive with what they just said (even with full citations and so on), and they will still just say something else or repeat the very idea that you just invalidated.

They will rationalize that even though they were wrong about the facts, that they are still right about the conclusion. That even though they dont know enough to defend their beliefs, that someone else must. The idea that someone else must is invalid because the entire chorus is just rationalizing.

Gatekeepers? WMD in Iraq ...

[BenBoy]

... and what do we do when the traditional gatekeepers fail us? Same damned thing. Read critically. Read multiple points of view, including those who disagree with you, and draw your own conclusions. Nobody can do that for you, and no system will do that for you.

I say we take off...

[stevegee58]

...and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

How un American of YOU

[airfoobar]

You should be out selling them pepper spray. It's a food product essentially.

Is there a story here?

[khallow]

I'm a bit puzzled as to why this is a story. Old media isn't any better as a whole at gatekeeping than the internet mob is. For example, most news articles are reprints with absolutely no effort to check that the reprint was accurate. And some "old media" are so biased and/or incompetent that I don't consider them a news source such as CNN or Fox News.

And for the old media sources that do real news reporting, such as the Washington Post, BBC, etc, we also have people in the internet mob doing their own fact checking as well.

For example, Slashdot does a fair job of real time fact-checking. If you're depending on You Tube (and You Tube comments!) for your news, then there is something very wrong with you.

We do nothing

[TheRealGrogan]

It's just something that comes with freedom of information. I don't want other people deciding what I get to know about, so if I have to endure some falsities so be it.

Bad information will also correct itself on the Internet. (like, umm, now) because anyone can refute that too and not everyone subscribes to the mob mentality.

I never want to go back to gatekeepers like Rupert Fucking Murdoch controlling information, thank you.

Why bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't much you can do against a mob, even one which is obviously wrong. Just wait it out and quietly try to educate people one at a time I suppose.

Doesn't work.

I shut up. Let folks stay ignorant - they won't believe you otherwise. And use their ignorance to manipulate them.

I'm not alone. Just look at what's happening in the Republican primaries. Here you have relatively well educated people spewing non-sense, lies and misinformation to pander to the ignorant masses. Does anyone really think Newt Gingrich is as stupid as he appears? Or Bachman? Cain? Perry (- Ok, maybe Perry is that stupid.)

I don't.

I see them as manipulating the public , using the public's own ignorance and contempt of facts and rational thinking and praying on their emotions.

That's what it has come to: emotional indulgence and the inability or lack of desire to gather the facts and look at an issue rationally. Careful study and self-education is out of the question. People want to be told what to believe. They don't want ugly truth - truth that's always a shade of gray and never black and white - right or wrong - good or evil - or any other childish binary thought.

Emotion and ego are like a drug. "I'm right - you're wrong and there's no two ways about it!" has become our society's mantra and it's leading us to a downfall. And some, Rupert Murdoch for one, have become quite rich and powerful taking advantage of this.

Re:Why bother.

[khallow]

Emotion and ego are like a drug. "I'm right - you're wrong and there's no two ways about it!" has become our society's mantra and it's leading us to a downfall.

Just like it was at the beginning of the US? This has always been with us and has always been a problem, yet we still managed to build a society on rational principles. It's interesting that you complain about Republican presidential candidates and then segue into this rant. I find that people who can't get others to agree with them seem susceptible to this belief.

My view on politicians is very simple. I'm only interested in what they will do, not their beliefs, not whether they believe they're pulling something on me, not on whether someone else thinks I'm being irrational, etc. So I consider things like apparent integrity, what they say they will do, their record, conflicts of interest, and their experience/competence.

Alexis de Tocqueville Tyranny of the Majority

[retroworks]

This has always been a balancing act, the same questions were raised about allowing non-landholders to vote, allowing women to vote, etc. There need to be editors and judges. But in just as many cases, we need the twittering mob to correct editors who get it wrong.

crowd behavior and crowd thinking

[meburke]

The original post asked, "What can we do when the internet mob is wrong?" Forget it; most people don't care. Thi8s discussion about the kid who got killed over new Nike shoes came up at work last night. some of the talkers were so outraged that they ranted for over half an hour. When I tell them today that it was a hoax, they will just go, "oops" and continue on as if they didn't waste their time and emotional energy for nothing. Five years from now they will be saying, "Do your remember that time the kid got killed...?" and will have forgotten that it wasn't true.

In the long term it will mean nothing. What matters is when there are consequences in the short term. Crowds have beaten and killed people when they mistakenly thought a person ran over a little kid, or was a molester, or robbed someplace etc., etc,.. Some sociologists are claiming that Obama go elected on the basis of crowd think and internet mob-ism. (This is not scientific, but I've asked lots of people over the years why they voted for Obama, and NOT ONE of them could tell me anything about his voting record in Illinois or Washington.) Cultural biases are affecting our lives. Friends tell me it was very uncomfortable being a middle eastern person in the USA after 9/11. This type of bias may fade, but when? And how much harm does it do in the meantime?

Bryan Caplan, and Economist, wrote a book called, "The Myth of the Rational Voter" http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428 , in which he points out that cultural biases against free markets and foreigners, and toward make-work and pessimism are exploited by politicians everywhere.

I doubt that there is anything we can do to offset the influence of sensationalism and propaganda except expose the facts as well as we can. (Ooops! Pessimism, right?)

Re:crowd behavior and crowd thinking

[colinrichardday]

Some sociologists are claiming that Obama go elected on the basis of crowd think and internet mob-ism. (This is not scientific, but I've asked lots of people over the years why they voted for Obama, and NOT ONE of them could tell me anything about his voting record in Illinois or Washington.)

I suspect that after eight years of Bush II, Americans would have voted for Satan over the Republicans.

Re:It's important in other cases too

[AngryDeuce]

What better quality of life is that? Our poor people have cell phones, cars, cable television, and too much food (poor americans are fat!) for christ sakes. You really cant get an 'enormously better quality of life' yet. Our poor are rich by any standards but the warped bullshit ones.

They're not fat because they have too much food, they're fat because the cheap food is all terrible for you.

A family of four can go to McDonald's and eat dinner for $15. They're consuming 2,000 empty calories in a single sitting. A 2-liter of Coke is $1.29. A gallon of orange juice is $6. See the problem?

Anyone that's actually made a conscious effort to eat better and lose weight quickly realizes how ridiculously fucking expensive it is to do so, and that ignores the time element involved. It takes far more time to prepare a proper meal than it does to hit the drive-through. When you're a wage slave you're not working 9-5, you're working two jobs just to live in the manner we call "first world". That means when you get done your 12-16 hour day at work, the last fucking thing you want to do is spend an hour in front of the stove. So what do you do? Break out the Hot Pockets. Two minutes and here's your dinner, kids.

It's easy to point fingers when you're on the other side of the fence. I grew up poor. I had Peanut Butter and Jelly for dinner more often than I can count, and believe me, it wasn't because my mother wasn't working hard. She worked 14 hours a fucking day and was so tired a lot of the time she would sometimes literally fall asleep standing in front of the stove making us Macaroni and Cheese. But hard work doesn't equal success. And success, in this world, definitely does not equal hard work.

As for the rest of the things you take objection to, let's see. Cell phones? How many people have a land line these days? Better yet, if you don't have good credit (as most poor people don't, how can you have good credit if you can't even get credit?) how the hell do you pay the phone company their $300 deposit to get the service turned on in the first place? You don't, so cell phone it is. Could you live without a phone? Could you function in today's world? But somehow, poor people are supposed to be able to? Please.

Cars? How the fuck else are they gonna get to work? Take the bus? What if the bus doesn't go where they work? I mean, the whole country isn't New York City. Most of us don't even have access to that kind of infrastructure. Shit, a lot of cash strapped cities are cutting back on their public transportation systems. So it's either get a car (usually a fucking beater that gets 3 miles a gallon when you're lucky enough to get it running) or not work. Believe me, I wish I lived in one of those places where I could realistically take public transportation. It would take me over an hour, one way, to get to work by bus, with all the transfer points. One hour by bus, less than 15 minutes by car. Not even exaggerating. Maybe you have the time to spare but I'm not lucky enough for that.

And cable, frankly, I call bullshit all over that one. I know hardly anyone that has cable anymore, and of those people that do, almost all of them have it because it's bundled with their internet service. Internet connectivity is almost as necessary to getting by in this world as having a telephone is. My bank, for instance, doesn't even do paper statements anymore. What few things are not primarily online-based are moving that way. I know people that pay their damn rent online now.

But, ignoring all that, if we're going to start holding up the poor of third-world countries and say "Shut up and be grateful for what you have!" than I say it's time to do the same thing for the rich. How many multi-billionaires do you think Somalia has produced? How about Indonesia? Why can't the wealthy here be happy with what the wealthy over there have?

Oh, I see. It's okay to be entitled if you're wealthy. Poor people should just be glad they're not forced to catch stray dogs and cats to eat.

OMG!!!!

[nick357]

Its Christmas Eve and I am really busy, so I only had time to skim the summary, but thats horrible that some kid got killed for his Nikes!!! Especially during this season its important we honor those killed so needlessly - even tho I am very busy, I am taking the time out to tweet in his honor, and post on Facebook my outrage at this kind of senseless violence! You all should do it too.

Re:What do you sell an angry unthinking Internet m

[Samantha Wright]

I like the ambiguity of the parsing in that sentence. "This just in: parents who are against Nike violence have been found to also be against small children!"

What?

[lightknight]

Traditional media is about on-par with the new media, in terms of accuracy-> "Locking the gate" serves no purpose, about as useful as pushing the 'close door' button on an elevator.

And if you consider the current traditional media's accuracy, which in my humble opinion, is producing lies so transparent even their staff have trouble stomaching it, you realize just how bad things are.

For some odd reason, people look back to the past as the golden era of journalism, when they reported 'the truth.' History reminds us otherwise: "yellow journalism" is a well-known term from a former era, worth reading about if you have the time. People are just nostalgic about their childhood, when they were brainless, spineless automatons who believed anything they were told; they're having trouble coming to grips with reality -> people lie, often and for no discernible reason; and even the good reasons are pretty terrible, but tradition outweighs common sense, and the people who employ lying the most tend to be the people with the least qualms about murdering people that disagree with them.

Consider, for your pleasure, the current holiday: Christmas. Parents lie to their kids about a guy in a big red jumpsuit, climbing down a chimney, riding around on a flying sleight with magical reindeer, and dispensing presents on the basis of a metric ("Naughty / Nice") which appears to conform with cultural norms of morality: people celebrate lies, and bury the truth. They love the lies their parents taught them so much, that many of them go on to teach them to their children. Just try telling someone else's kids that Santa is a lie; see if you aren't vilified.

That's not even touching on the holiday's origins itself. It's turtles all the way down!

We can't cure stupidity

[fyngyrz]

Until or unless gene therapy goes a lot further than it has...

"You can't cure stupid."

I think what's going to happen first is sex-, service- and menial-robotics and other game-changing vehicles for technological plenty and comfort will come along and (further) pacify the crowd; they'll be no less hungry for gossip, but they'll be even less willing to disturb the status quo that is serving them up said comforts than they are today. We won't see superstition go away until or unless it becomes a form of child abuse to let your child be born and/or raised stupid, and/or gullible, and/or without critical thinking abilities. Just an IMHO.