All posts tagged: misinformation

Misinformation Fuels a Sick Fascination with Wellness

Misinformation Fuels a Sick Fascination with Wellness

Published by skeptic

The health and wellness industry is big business—massive, in fact—and is rife with misinformation and pseudoscience. Three presenters covered this topic and then later sat together for a broader discussion as a panel.  Timothy Caufield: The New Wellness BS? Manly Woo Timothy Caufield, professor of law and public health, took us deep into the darkness of the manosphere where manly men prove their manliness by bulking up their bodies, eating raw meat, slapping their testicles, and even drinking their own urine to combat the attack on masculinity. The manosphere has testosterone turned up to eleven, and they want men to consume their products and adopt the manly lifestyle to avoid being seen as effeminate. This trend is so rampant that the misinformation about men’s health is lowering their life expectancy (Sforza 2023). The deception bleeds into all aspects of life causing a decline in trust in science that results in higher rates of climate change denial, more vaccine hesitancy, and even an increase in feelings of disenfranchisement. The manosphere doesn’t make men or society better …

What Meta’s move to community moderation could mean for misinformation

What Meta’s move to community moderation could mean for misinformation

Published by skeptic

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other services has announced it will discontinue its third-party factchecking programmes, starting in the US. Journalists and anti-hate speech activists have criticised the decision as an attempt to curry favour with the incoming US president, Donald Trump, but there could be an even more cynical reason. Meta’s strategy could be a calculated move for greater user engagement and income. This decision marks a significant shift in how the social media giant addresses misinformation on its platforms. Meta’s official rationale for ending its independent factchecking in favour of crowdsourced contributions centres on promoting free expression. Chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said that the company seeks to reduce censorship and will concentrate its enforcement efforts on illegal or highly harmful content. This move aligns with broader discussions among governments, social media companies, civil society groups and the public on balancing freedom of expression and content moderation. These debates have become urgent, as there is mounting evidence that there are biases in content moderation. For example, a 2023 University of …

Australia’s Misinformation Bill Is Dead… For Now

Australia’s Misinformation Bill Is Dead… For Now

Published by skeptic

Authored by Maryanne Demasi via The Brownstone Institute, It is official.  The Australian government’s attempt to ram through legislation to combat misinformation online has been blocked after the Greens party announced it would not support the controversial bill. “We are concerned this bill doesn’t actually do what it needs to do when it comes to stopping the deliberate mass distribution of false and harmful information,” said Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. This unexpected move is said to be the final nail in the coffin for the bill that intended to grant the media watchdog unprecedented regulatory powers to oversee digital content and determine what is ‘misinformation.’ A Domino Effect During this week, an interesting display of parliamentary dynamics unfolded as an array of Senators announced they would oppose the bill, one by one. Senators Lidia Thorpe, Tammy Tyrell, David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, Gerard Rennick, Fatima Payman, and others declared their opposition. Their reasons varied from concerns over government overreach, and vague definitions of misinformation, to the implications for political discourse and the potential for misuse. Each …

The Cranky Uncle Game: A Way to Logic-Check Misinformation about Climate Change

The Cranky Uncle Game: A Way to Logic-Check Misinformation about Climate Change

Published by skeptic

When we think of the damage caused by misinformation, we tend to think of false beliefs. Misinformation reduces acceptance of the reality of climate change, raises doubts about the safety of vaccines, and inspires false beliefs such as flat-earthism. But the damage caused by misinformation goes beyond beliefs, affecting people’s behavior in ways that harm society. For example, hearing a conspiracy theory about climate change makes people less likely to engage in politics (Jolley and Douglas 2014).  Given the damage misinformation can and is doing, it’s imperative that we push back. The most common tool we have for countering misinformation is fact-checking. Explaining the facts is certainly valuable, and an analysis of many studies measuring the impact of fact-checking found that they tend to have a positive effect on political beliefs (Walter et al. 2020). However, there are limitations to what fact-checking can address.  One form of misinformation that is difficult to fact-check is paltering: the use of true statements to convey a misleading impression (Schauer and Zeckhauser 2009). A form of paltering often found …

NASA just jumped online to correct outrageous space station misinformation

NASA just jumped online to correct outrageous space station misinformation

Published by skeptic

Sure, the aging International Space Station has a well-known, ongoing leak. But it’s not nearly in danger of imminently crashing. NASA responded to a post on X, formerly Twitter, claiming that the “ISS is going to crash soon via de-orbit,” and included a screenshot from a 4chan post with a blurry graph showing altitude data. The space agency likely responded in an attempt to get ahead of a dubious post that’s picking up decent traction (with nearly 9,000 likes and hundreds of shares by the afternoon of Dec. 18). “The International @Space_Station continues to orbit the Earth as planned, and the crew aboard is safe. You can track the space station’s current path anytime at https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm,” NASA posted on X. SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills. The post is an example of the deluge of misinformation available on X. Indeed, X has a feature, Community Notes, that the platform says allows users to “collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts” — and it can sometimes address egregious …

How to disrupt misinformation with the “ladder of misinference”

How to disrupt misinformation with the “ladder of misinference”

Published by skeptic

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. It likely wasn’t long after the first utterances of our ancestors that misinformation was born. It may have been an honest misunderstanding. It may have been a dubious actor trying to get one up on his fellow tribe members. Whatever the case, half-truths and alternative facts are nothing new. Granted, a case can be made that social media and AI have supercharged the spread of misinformation but the age-old, and rather humbling, reason it persists is simple enough: Under the right conditions, everyone is susceptible. One reason is “decision fatigue.” We often lack the specialized knowledge to thoroughly assess the many ideas, statements, and news stories we encounter daily. Even if we could gain that knowledge, learning takes time and we live busy lives. We can check in on what the experts say, but experts will disagree, so that route means determining whom to listen to. So what do we …

Before buying a voice assistant for Christmas, you should worry about misinformation

Before buying a voice assistant for Christmas, you should worry about misinformation

Published by skeptic

Smart speakers with voice assistants like Alexa are a popular Christmas gift, and due to the recent development of generative AI, conversations with voice assistants are becoming more natural and “human” than ever. Instead of treating voice assistants as servants that switch off the light or play music, they are now marketed as companions that can be used for sophisticated tasks. For example, more and more people turn to them to find out information and facts. Voice assistants are especially convenient for people who have problems with writing or reading, such as children, blind people or some older adults. But before buying a grandparent or child one of these devices, you should consider the risks. Voice assistants sometimes provide misinformation – and this is harder to detect when it’s delivered by voice. Research from my lab has shown that the same information is perceived as more credible when it is read by a voice assistant than when it is formatted like a Google search snippet or like a Wikipedia article. In our experiments, we also …

Misinformation really does spread like a virus, suggest mathematical models drawn from epidemiology

Misinformation really does spread like a virus, suggest mathematical models drawn from epidemiology

Published by skeptic

We’re increasingly aware of how misinformation can influence elections. About 73% of Americans report seeing misleading election news, and about half struggle to discern what is true or false. When it comes to misinformation, “going viral” appears to be more than a simple catchphrase. Scientists have found a close analogy between the spread of misinformation and the spread of viruses. In fact, how misinformation gets around can be effectively described using mathematical models designed to simulate the spread of pathogens. Concerns about misinformation are widely held, with a recent UN survey suggesting that 85% of people worldwide are worried about it. These concerns are well founded. Foreign disinformation has grown in sophistication and scope since the 2016 US election. The 2024 election cycle has seen dangerous conspiracy theories about “weather manipulation” undermining proper management of hurricanes, fake news about immigrants eating pets inciting violence against the Haitian community, and misleading election conspiracy theories amplified by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Recent studies have employed mathematical models drawn from epidemiology (the study of how diseases …

How voters justify political misinformation

How voters justify political misinformation

Published by José

Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders – even when they know it’s factually inaccurate. According to our research, voters often recognize when their parties’ claims are not based on objective evidence. Yet they still respond positively, if they believe these inaccurate statements evoke a deeper, more important “truth.” Our team conducted a series of online surveys from 2018 to 2023 with over 3,900 American voters. These surveys were designed to elicit responses about how they evaluated political statements from several politicians, even when they recognized those statements as factually inaccurate. Consider former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Even among supporters who recognized that his claims about fraud were not grounded in objective evidence, we found that they were more likely to see these allegations as important for “American priorities”: for example, they believe the political system is illegitimate and stacked against their interests. The same logic applies to factually inaccurate statements about COVID-19 vaccinations that President Joe Biden made, suggesting that vaccinated people could …