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Study: Most Students Can't Spot Fake News (engadget.com)
Even those who think that the U.S. Presidential election wasn't affected by the swath of fake news articles swirling on Facebook and other social media networks, they tend to agree that there is a lot of misinformation on the web. At Slashdot, it's hard to say that anyone here will not be able to tell fake news from a real one. But what about kids? How is our future generation doing? Not so well, apparently. An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report:A Stanford study of 7,804 middle school, high school and college students has found that most of them couldn't identify fake news on their own. Their susceptibility varied with age, but even a large number of the older students fell prey to bogus reports. Over two-thirds of middle school kids didn't see why they shouldn't trust a bank executive's post claiming that young adults need financial help, while nearly 40 percent of high schoolers didn't question the link between an unsourced photo and the claims attached to it. Why did many of the students misjudge the authenticity of a story? They were fixated on the appearance of legitimacy, rather than the quality of information. A large photo or a lot of detail was enough to make a Twitter post seem credible, even if the actual content was incomplete or wrong. There are plenty of adults who respond this way, we'd add, but students are more vulnerable than most.
Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
But that might lead to critical thinking.
"His name was James Damore."
"At Slashdot, it's hard to say that anyone here will not be able to tell fake news from a real one."
Judging by some of the discussions over the last few days on similar articles I doubt this.
This clearly illustrates the one area where schools lack: critical thinking
Our school system is really only designed to enable rote memorization:
Memorize your multiplication tables.
Memorize the dates of the Egyptian empire
Memorize the themes in To Kill a Mockingbird
Memorize that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
They are given a book, told "this book is truth, memorize this book," and so yeah, seeing an article with ulterior motives would throw them for a loop.
If you want better politicians, you need a better populace. If you want a better populace, you're going to need a better public school system that teaches students more than just numbers and facts. We need to teach them how to think critically, how to examine the world around them, and how to leverage the internet as a nearly unlimited resource, while being wary of the ability for any random jack-hole to post some spurious shit on their blog.
This signature is false.
And worst of all, they keep standing on your lawn.
I'm fucking sick of this narrativr being pushed on Slashdot. Your first clue that it's politically motivated should have been President Obama using his presidential podium to bitch about it. Your latest should have been how quickly China latched onto the bandwagon. Those with longer memories might recall that China has enforced internet censorship using this exact rationale before; "anti-social misinformation." But "fake news" is much more succinct - it implies that "real news" can only come from "real news sources." Coincidentally this endless propaganda blitz only started after it was revealed how much election info people got from their friends on Facebook. It's yet another media attempt to solidify - nay reclaim - their oligarchal status as outlets that people trusted implicitly. One need look no further than their current behavior - where they are issuing hysterical semons about Trump being "the least transparent President in history" because he didn't inform the media before stepping out for a fucking steak dinner - to see the depths of their panic. After a campaign season where they dropped the last pretenses of objectivity and did their level best to destroy Trump - only to see him win the Presidency - they know their former sainted and respected status as Messengers From Olympus is no more. They can shriek and rage and stomp their feet all they want but nothing will change this. Trump uses Twitter to speak to the masses directly, which underscores the point: they are not just no longer trusted, but no longer needed.
No number of propaganda articles will change that.
Ron Paul compiled a list of fake news from mainstream/big media based on the Wikileaks emails from John Podesta. There was amazing collaboration between the Clinton campaign and major media outlets, and spin perpetrated on the world. It is shameful.
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/revealed-the-real-fake-news-list
Offenders include ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Daily Beast, Huff Po, MSNBC, NBC, NY Times, Politico, Washington Post and more.
Polls were rigged by oversampling democrats vs. republicans/independents so many were flat wrong. Aggregate sites like 538 were wrong. "Legitimate" news sites pushed a common agenda and it was fake. Your only hope is to read multiple outlets, traditional and non-traditional news, with very different points of view, focus on facts, know that the EVERY reporter is biased, take that into account, and draw your own conclusions.
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
-- George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
This is a dunning-kruger problem. The only way you can tell if something is fake or not, is if you already have at least some knowledge about the subject matter. If there's an article from a trusted news source about how Intel put out a 6GHz CPU, the first thing I would do is check if the date is April 1st because I know about the problems involved.
If an article says someone has discovered a liquid form of a higgs-boson condensate, how would I know different? I mean, it's a condensate , obviously it must condense somehow.
And to make matters worse, in the US there are truth in advertising laws but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for news. At least, I assume that must be the case, because I can't fathom how Fox News could be viable otherwise.
Fake news is nothing new, and certainly not specific to this past election. The only thing different is that people are finally starting to wake up to how serious of a problem it is.
Ignorance and confidence, that's always a winning combination.
Sadly, it seems to be one lately.
That's the point. Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
Good luck with that. There are kids in their 20s in college who can't budget, can't cook, and if it isn't on Facebook it doesn't exist. There are adults high school (drop-outs) who have never applied for even a part-time job and as a result are too afraid of rejection to give it a try (real special snowflakes) They drop out of government-paid trade schools that give them an extra stipend, and they can't budget either, which is why they get iPhones and home internet on a $150 a month plan as soon as their check comes, go to concerts at $200 a pop, eat out with their friends, and then wonder why they have no money for food or rent.
You don't need to teach them critical thinking - you need to teach them basic thinking. Cause and effect, such as "you spend money on sh*t you want, you won't have money for sh*t you need.".
Last week I had the displeasure to watch one second-year college student who works as a cook in a burger franchise screw up making grilled cheese.
Q: How the hell do you screw up making a grilled cheese sandwich?
They don't have basic life skills and you expect to teach them logic? Sheldon says (and Mr Spock agrees) that is illogical. And we have a new generation of teachers who don't know much either, because they were also special snowflakes. They teach from the book because, like the burger cook, they can't do it if it isn't laid out step by step.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"The problem with quotes on the internet is it is hard to validate their authenticity" - Abraham Lincoln
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Lemmings. I, by default, trust nothing. Not a way to live really but is imposed on us. So sad...
This election is the first time in my life I've taken the trouble to dig down past the news reporting into the facts that were reported.
This almost looks orchestrated.
Right now we're seeing the first rumblings of a landslide change in the way news is reported. We're starting by building up a problem in the minds of the readership, being "fake news sites". (Note that it's fake *sites*, not fake *stories*.)
This will go on for awhile until most of the readership simply accepts that "fake news sites" is a real problem that needs to be addressed. Then we'll see sites rolling out their "fixes" to the problems.
Google is pulling ad revenue from sites deemed to be "fake news", under the rule that they are not "advertiser friendly". Expect many ambiguous rules and discretionary enforcement to be implemented. For example, Scott Adams being shadow banned from twitter for having insightful views on the election.
I never knew about Breitbart news until this election, and after following them for the last 3 months I think they're probably the best example of actual news reporting on the net. The site is right-wing slanted, but the actual reporting appears to be high quality and accurate.
Compare with, for example, Huffington Post which had at the bottom of each article about Trump, the statement: "Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the U.S." A direct quote, and I personally saw this at the bottom of several HuffPo articles.
The difference is between *what* gets reported, versus the *style* of reporting. Sites can be left-leaning or right-leaning, but the text shouldn't be obviously dismissive, judgemental, opinionated drivel. Readers shouldn't be told what to think - they should make up their own minds.
So look to the future, where *sites* (not articles) can't be found in search engines, can't get ad revenue, and have to live in the shadows,
Oh, and here's a list of famous fake news articles published by the MSM in recent years.
Also note that the "fake news" scare originally started from a professor creating a list of "fake news" websites was itself fake!. The list has since been taken down, but the term "fake news site" that it coined will be with us for awhile.
The “fake news” freakout: The story about a professor creating an authoritative list of “fake news” websites, as widely reported across the mainstream media, was itself a fake news story. The creator of the list was a madcap left-wing activist who compiled it on a whim, not through any sort of rigorously-vetted academic process. When the list of fake news sites came under sustained criticism, it was removed from the Internet, long after generating a raft of stories on top news websites and TV shows.
As with many of the other stories above, the fake-news-site list received huge MSM coverage because it dovetailed with a Democrat political initiative – President Obama is personally involved – and it flattered both the ideological preferences and business interests of Big Media.
People who followed the Clintons during the 90s - when Trump was one of their fanbois - know all the things that you pretend don't exist. The Rose Law Firm, Hilary's Cattle Futures, Whitewater, her attempt to take over US healthcare, et al. Those were done fully utilizing the fact that her husband ran things. Then after Bill's term ended, Hilary became a senator, a role in which she achieved squat, then ran for president and thankfully got pummelled by Obama. Then became Secretary of State and managed to totally mismanage the Arab Spring crises that followed, as well as violating government rules on handling government information. Crimes that sent other people to jail.
Quit being a shill for her. The Dems could have won this election had they played fair and let Bernie beat her. I actually disagree w/ Bernie on most things, but I'll say this for him: he drew bigger crowds than Trump, and had he been the nominee, any GOP candidate - be it Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich,... would have lost in a landslide. Similar to Obama's win over Romney
You are confusing propaganda with news. Trump saying something on twitter isn't news. Somebody posting an article on facebook isn't news. You have to have a vetting process, and a check/verification process, be it at the editor, but more rpeferably at the reading end too. And no matter what side of the political process you, both Democrate and republican are faulty of using hoax stories, let us call them by what they really are. You take trump as example, but even he fell down the trap with that so called "jihadist" video which was an hoax.
During the hayday of journalism , say 1940 to 1970-80ish , this vetting and verification process was understood, and serious journalism rose above the yellow press. But starting 1980ies and strongly 1990ies, it declined because people are pretty damn cheap. So vetting and serious investigation dropped, dropped and dropped until the cost are so much cut that every damn idiot copy/paste one source be it a AFP , Reuter or a 3rd party rag, check it, they even don't bother changing the wording. Heck now people are considering the shit out of facebook news. It isn't. They are just stories, as likelies to be hoax, taken out of context, or even news, without vetting or fact checking you can't tell. Since there is no vetting process on either side (writing/reading), no double check , those hoax get spread. heck scam too. Steorn. Rossi eCat. And so forth. How often I tried to get people to spot the warning sign ? And get ignored because I am a "liberal" or a "rightwingnut" (depending on the slant of the story I try to point out has problem) or even a "close minded scientist" ?
And frankly, I have been saying for years it is a problem, albeit in skeptical forums, not here. The problem is that critical thinking is a skill one need to learn because it is pretty damn easy to fall into one's bias as long as they go the way one politically think. Nobody Is teaching critical thinking. So for years we have been seeing hoaxes rise as stories and being handled seriously. Heck among skeptic group, what do you think we try to fight for ? Critical thinking is THE skill everybody should be getting. And yet again I predict that this will fall by the byside , being seen as propaganda from butthurt people.
The only point where you are right, is that a lot of media are butthurt now and see that as a problem. But that does not mean the problem is not real. It is real, and I have seen the rise of hoax and scam being treated very seriously , far more than previously in spite of fact checking being so easy nowadays.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I had an amazing teacher in middle school. He'd teach us exactly that--how to spot propaganda, false advertising claims, etc. It was probably the best set of lessons I ever learned because now I'm impervious to all the crap.
Of course, if he was teaching today they'd try to brand him as a communist or a "leftist" (whatever that means) ...
Actually he would alternately be branded a communist/leftist and a racist/misogynist/[something]-phobe depending on whose propaganda was being scrutinized.
:-)
There, I reject your implication that it is only the right offering false claims.
But that might lead to critical thinking.
Unlikely. Most teachers benefit a lot from the educational status quo, which is defended by the Democratic Party. College professors are the most politically biased group in America. According to some polls, only 3% of them voted for Trump. Our educational system is the problem, not the solution, with a strong vested interest in indoctrination rather than thinking.
Or maybe, just perhaps, those college professors know something you don't. Just a thought.
Yes, they know the world of scholarly journals and ivory towers. Not necessarily the real world. The more we move from hard science to soft science the more their teachings are opinions and beliefs, often politicized ones. If you think professors are beyond such things you have not spent much time around them.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
Great quote, but it has more impact if you cite your source: Socrates, 469-399 BC.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Perhaps that "indoctrination" allowed people to see him for the con artist he truly is.
Or, just maybe, "higher education" is just nothing more than an extension of the high school popularity contest, in which you just have to say and do and "question" the right things to get in and play the game? I should know, I still manage to play it every day. Empty shells of people walking around trying to out-signal each other to show who's most virtuous, most oppressed, or most "progressive".
The "indoctrination" is just that. And unless you want to be cast out of the group, you'd better not think outside the box. Or at least, don't say things too loudly. The real world, far outside of the walls of the echo chambers that make up the modern university are something most people there have never experienced. And I'm honestly free of sarcasm when I ask you, honestly, has this thought ever crossed your mind?
And you think these things are done to a greater degree today?
If so, you're wrong. I don't know when you grew up, but property crime in the US has been steadily declining for decades.
You are welcome on my lawn.