How to fight lies, tricks, and chaos online
By Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy Dec 3, 2019, 9:04am EST
Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge
AA few months ago, I got angry about something on Twitter. Somebody had tweeted a photo of a paper sign in an apartment building, informing tenants that using the elevator would soon cost $35 a month. It was surprising, but on a gut level, exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect from a greedy landlord — the kind of thing that’s easy to furiously retweet without thinking.
But a little digging showed that the photo was uploaded to Reddit back in 2013, and the post’s author said the signs were quickly taken down. The building manager denied writing them to both the author and a reporter, suggesting that this was either a prank or an immediately abandoned plan. Retweeting the photo would have just outraged people about something that had seemingly never happened.
This kind of viral half-truth is part of the fabric of today’s internet, and the kind of anger it inspired has been turned into a dangerous commodity. It’s cynically exploited by businesses for ad-supported “fake news,” by scammers raising money online, and by authoritarian governments to spread hate and fear.
I don’t want to blame people who fall for these tricks. A lot of the problems are exacerbated by companies, governments, and other factors that individuals can’t control. But the internet is full of grifters, tricksters, and outright liars who rely on people’s basic trust to amplify their message. It’s worth slowing down and carefully navigating their traps — to avoid spreading an alarming false rumor, getting angry at a group of people for something they didn’t do, or perpetuating an honest misunderstanding.
And as a person who does care deeply about putting true things online, I know I’ve personally misunderstood stories because I didn’t think to look more closely, and not always because somebody was deliberately fooling me. It took me years to really understand where all the information I saw online was coming from. So this isn’t just a guide to spotting when something is fake. It’s a system for slowing down and thinking about information — whether that information is true, false, or something in between.
Step One: When to be worried
It’s hard to be vigilant all the time, but there are a few red flags that indicate something might be misleading.
The first step is honing your sense of when a given piece of content is too good (or bad) to be true. Once you start looking, you’ll notice specific subtypes of this content — like ragebait designed to get traffic from people’s anger, hyperpartisan appeals that twist the facts, or outright scams. The techniques are relatively common across different types of story, and they’re not hard to recognize.
Outside these specific cases, the general technique is almost stupidly simple: if a story grabs your attention for any reason, slow down and look closer.
Looking Deeper
You have a strong emotional reaction
Good journalism should provoke feelings. But bad journalism — like tabloid sensationalism, hyperpartisan fear-mongering, and deliberate disinformation — exploits them. Its creators try to convince people that thinking and feeling are opposed to each other, so if you’re upset or happy about a story, you shouldn’t care about the details.
But being strongly moved by a story should make you want to know more, not less. If the news is accurate, you’ll end up learning important nuances about an issue you care about. And if it’s false or misleading, you can warn other people away from falling for it.
A story seems totally ridiculous — or perfectly confirms your beliefs
Genuinely counterintuitive news appears all the time, because the world is a strange place that none of us can fully understand. But if something seems completely bizarre or baffling, there’s often a more complicated story behind the headline. That’s especially true with science stories, where nuanced research can get summed up in misleading or exaggerated ways.
Conversely, if a story feels intuitively right, be careful. Disinformation operators, tabloids, and other bad actors twist real events to fit popular narratives, assuming (often correctly) that people will engage more with news they want to believe. Like the heartstring-tugging stories mentioned above, these stories might turn out to be accurate — but if they are, digging into them will teach you more about something you’re interested in, so it’s still worth the time.
You’re going to spend money because of it
Stories that deal with political fundraising or crowdfunding might fall into this category. So could stories about health issues, financial planning, or picking a college. Even if they don’t directly affect you, you should make sure you’re passing along good life advice and reliable deals to the people around you.
You immediately want to amplify the story
When you share a story with your friends or followers, or you engage by liking or commenting, you’re encouraging other people to look at that information and boosting the profile of the entire site or account that posted it. That raises the stakes if something is fake or misleading — so as you’re debating whether a story fits the categories above, err on the side of caution before you amplify it.
Firsthand sources
Even if you don’t trust a particular outlet, you can often use their reporting to work back to primary sources, which you can use to fact-check what the outlet is saying or cast it in a different light. Here are some particular sources to look for:
A legal filing
Stories involving specific crimes are often drawn directly from legal filings, which are usually publicly available. You can often find the original documents as links in the article, or uploaded to third-party sites like Scribd, DocumentCloud, or CourtListener. Many of the filings only show allegations, but they’re a reliable picture of what the authorities think is happening in a particular case.
Interviews and direct quotes
Firsthand interviews are a core element of journalism. When possible, news outlets will print a person’s real name and quote them directly, and since most reputable journalists won’t risk their job by fabricating a quote or a source wholesale, those quotes are usually reliable. Outlets will generally only withhold names if identifying a person would endanger them, or put them in legal jeopardy.
Leaked documents
Some of the most important stories in journalism come from leaked documents, which can reveal corporate wrongdoing or governmental misconduct. But less established outlets sometimes exaggerate what a particular video or document means, using original material as a license to make outlandish claims. It’s often useful to check the document to make sure it supports the article’s claims.
A press release
Companies often exaggerate to make themselves look good, but if you want to confirm that a particular event or announcement really happened, a press release is a good way to make sure. You can find many of these statements on company and government agency websites, official social media accounts, and dedicated sites like PR Newswire.
Step two: How to check out a link
Once you’ve decided to look more deeply at a story online, it’s time to figure out where and when it comes from. Internet news can work like a game of telephone: every time somebody reposts or rewrites something, there’s a chance that important details will get lost.
The first step in that process is finding the date of the original story — which is one of the most helpful pieces of information you can get. If the story’s being shared in a Facebook post or a tweet, click on the post and find its date, otherwise known as the timestamp. You should also look for the source of the relevant information. Sometimes a news story will explicitly cite its sources, whether that’s by making clear that the author performed firsthand research and interviews, or by linking to a press release or another news outlet. If it’s the latter, just click through to see where the information is coming from, and make sure to check the timestamp on that as well.
Sometimes, though, it’s unclear where news originated — a story might print an inflammatory quote without saying where or when it’s from, or a Twitter account might share a photo with a description that might be wrong. In those cases, do a quick search for more coverage and original sourcing, generally using a search engine like Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Google.
For more specific search tips, here are some of the strategies I use.
Looking Deeper
Check the verification
As more announcements get made through social media, it’s becoming easier to pull off hoaxes by impersonating a public figure on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. A tweet from @WhiteHouse is an official statement from the government, for example — but somebody could call an account something like “@WhiteH0us,” set its display name and profile picture to match the White House’s, and tweet something that’s almost identical at a glance.
Major social media platforms generally grant verification badges to big businesses, celebrities, government agencies, and other high-profile accounts. (On Twitter, it’s a blue check mark.)
Unverified accounts can still be authentic, but you should do more research. Do the account’s other posts match its supposed identity? Does a business or organization link to it from their website?
It’s also easy to fake screenshots of a tweet or Facebook post. If you see one of these screenshots, look up the person’s feed to find the actual post. If it’s not there, evaluate how credible the person who posted the screenshot is. The post might have been deleted — or it might have never existed at all.
Look for names and keywords
Google can be a great tool for finding other coverage of a particular event, but searching for a story’s general topic or its most famous subject often brings up a lot of generic, unhelpful search results. It’s better to look for unique keywords like the name of an unfamous person who’s quoted in the story, a specific bill being introduced in Congress, or anything else that’s unlikely to show up in other articles. If somebody is suing a huge corporation, for example, just typing in “Apple lawsuit” or “Facebook lawsuit” will bring up countless results. Adding the name of the person bringing the lawsuit will narrow those down substantially.
Find survey and infographic sources
A good chart or infographic will cite where its data comes from, so you can make sure that place exists and learn more about its research. Take this graph of where Americans are getting news, for example:
The graph cites the well-known Pew Research Center, along with the date the information was gathered. You can find the original source by typing the header “Television dominates as a news source for older Americans” into a search engine, then finding a result from pewresearch.org. In this case, Google returns a page dedicated to the chart, as well as a full blog post explaining the survey in more detail.
A bad infographic, meanwhile, might cite an easily manipulated online survey or a government agency that doesn’t exist. And a really bad one won’t even mention where the data comes from. If you really want to delve into what makes an infographic reliable, Forbes published a guide in 2014 that’s still relevant today.
By Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy Dec 3, 2019, 9:04am EST
Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge
AA few months ago, I got angry about something on Twitter. Somebody had tweeted a photo of a paper sign in an apartment building, informing tenants that using the elevator would soon cost $35 a month. It was surprising, but on a gut level, exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect from a greedy landlord — the kind of thing that’s easy to furiously retweet without thinking.
But a little digging showed that the photo was uploaded to Reddit back in 2013, and the post’s author said the signs were quickly taken down. The building manager denied writing them to both the author and a reporter, suggesting that this was either a prank or an immediately abandoned plan. Retweeting the photo would have just outraged people about something that had seemingly never happened.
This kind of viral half-truth is part of the fabric of today’s internet, and the kind of anger it inspired has been turned into a dangerous commodity. It’s cynically exploited by businesses for ad-supported “fake news,” by scammers raising money online, and by authoritarian governments to spread hate and fear.
I don’t want to blame people who fall for these tricks. A lot of the problems are exacerbated by companies, governments, and other factors that individuals can’t control. But the internet is full of grifters, tricksters, and outright liars who rely on people’s basic trust to amplify their message. It’s worth slowing down and carefully navigating their traps — to avoid spreading an alarming false rumor, getting angry at a group of people for something they didn’t do, or perpetuating an honest misunderstanding.
And as a person who does care deeply about putting true things online, I know I’ve personally misunderstood stories because I didn’t think to look more closely, and not always because somebody was deliberately fooling me. It took me years to really understand where all the information I saw online was coming from. So this isn’t just a guide to spotting when something is fake. It’s a system for slowing down and thinking about information — whether that information is true, false, or something in between.
Step One: When to be worried
It’s hard to be vigilant all the time, but there are a few red flags that indicate something might be misleading.
The first step is honing your sense of when a given piece of content is too good (or bad) to be true. Once you start looking, you’ll notice specific subtypes of this content — like ragebait designed to get traffic from people’s anger, hyperpartisan appeals that twist the facts, or outright scams. The techniques are relatively common across different types of story, and they’re not hard to recognize.
Outside these specific cases, the general technique is almost stupidly simple: if a story grabs your attention for any reason, slow down and look closer.
Looking Deeper
You have a strong emotional reaction
Good journalism should provoke feelings. But bad journalism — like tabloid sensationalism, hyperpartisan fear-mongering, and deliberate disinformation — exploits them. Its creators try to convince people that thinking and feeling are opposed to each other, so if you’re upset or happy about a story, you shouldn’t care about the details.
But being strongly moved by a story should make you want to know more, not less. If the news is accurate, you’ll end up learning important nuances about an issue you care about. And if it’s false or misleading, you can warn other people away from falling for it.
A story seems totally ridiculous — or perfectly confirms your beliefs
Genuinely counterintuitive news appears all the time, because the world is a strange place that none of us can fully understand. But if something seems completely bizarre or baffling, there’s often a more complicated story behind the headline. That’s especially true with science stories, where nuanced research can get summed up in misleading or exaggerated ways.
Conversely, if a story feels intuitively right, be careful. Disinformation operators, tabloids, and other bad actors twist real events to fit popular narratives, assuming (often correctly) that people will engage more with news they want to believe. Like the heartstring-tugging stories mentioned above, these stories might turn out to be accurate — but if they are, digging into them will teach you more about something you’re interested in, so it’s still worth the time.
You’re going to spend money because of it
Stories that deal with political fundraising or crowdfunding might fall into this category. So could stories about health issues, financial planning, or picking a college. Even if they don’t directly affect you, you should make sure you’re passing along good life advice and reliable deals to the people around you.
You immediately want to amplify the story
When you share a story with your friends or followers, or you engage by liking or commenting, you’re encouraging other people to look at that information and boosting the profile of the entire site or account that posted it. That raises the stakes if something is fake or misleading — so as you’re debating whether a story fits the categories above, err on the side of caution before you amplify it.
Firsthand sources
Even if you don’t trust a particular outlet, you can often use their reporting to work back to primary sources, which you can use to fact-check what the outlet is saying or cast it in a different light. Here are some particular sources to look for:
A legal filing
Stories involving specific crimes are often drawn directly from legal filings, which are usually publicly available. You can often find the original documents as links in the article, or uploaded to third-party sites like Scribd, DocumentCloud, or CourtListener. Many of the filings only show allegations, but they’re a reliable picture of what the authorities think is happening in a particular case.
Interviews and direct quotes
Firsthand interviews are a core element of journalism. When possible, news outlets will print a person’s real name and quote them directly, and since most reputable journalists won’t risk their job by fabricating a quote or a source wholesale, those quotes are usually reliable. Outlets will generally only withhold names if identifying a person would endanger them, or put them in legal jeopardy.
Leaked documents
Some of the most important stories in journalism come from leaked documents, which can reveal corporate wrongdoing or governmental misconduct. But less established outlets sometimes exaggerate what a particular video or document means, using original material as a license to make outlandish claims. It’s often useful to check the document to make sure it supports the article’s claims.
A press release
Companies often exaggerate to make themselves look good, but if you want to confirm that a particular event or announcement really happened, a press release is a good way to make sure. You can find many of these statements on company and government agency websites, official social media accounts, and dedicated sites like PR Newswire.
Step two: How to check out a link
Once you’ve decided to look more deeply at a story online, it’s time to figure out where and when it comes from. Internet news can work like a game of telephone: every time somebody reposts or rewrites something, there’s a chance that important details will get lost.
The first step in that process is finding the date of the original story — which is one of the most helpful pieces of information you can get. If the story’s being shared in a Facebook post or a tweet, click on the post and find its date, otherwise known as the timestamp. You should also look for the source of the relevant information. Sometimes a news story will explicitly cite its sources, whether that’s by making clear that the author performed firsthand research and interviews, or by linking to a press release or another news outlet. If it’s the latter, just click through to see where the information is coming from, and make sure to check the timestamp on that as well.
Sometimes, though, it’s unclear where news originated — a story might print an inflammatory quote without saying where or when it’s from, or a Twitter account might share a photo with a description that might be wrong. In those cases, do a quick search for more coverage and original sourcing, generally using a search engine like Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Google.
For more specific search tips, here are some of the strategies I use.
Looking Deeper
Check the verification
As more announcements get made through social media, it’s becoming easier to pull off hoaxes by impersonating a public figure on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. A tweet from @WhiteHouse is an official statement from the government, for example — but somebody could call an account something like “@WhiteH0us,” set its display name and profile picture to match the White House’s, and tweet something that’s almost identical at a glance.
Major social media platforms generally grant verification badges to big businesses, celebrities, government agencies, and other high-profile accounts. (On Twitter, it’s a blue check mark.)
Unverified accounts can still be authentic, but you should do more research. Do the account’s other posts match its supposed identity? Does a business or organization link to it from their website?
It’s also easy to fake screenshots of a tweet or Facebook post. If you see one of these screenshots, look up the person’s feed to find the actual post. If it’s not there, evaluate how credible the person who posted the screenshot is. The post might have been deleted — or it might have never existed at all.
Look for names and keywords
Google can be a great tool for finding other coverage of a particular event, but searching for a story’s general topic or its most famous subject often brings up a lot of generic, unhelpful search results. It’s better to look for unique keywords like the name of an unfamous person who’s quoted in the story, a specific bill being introduced in Congress, or anything else that’s unlikely to show up in other articles. If somebody is suing a huge corporation, for example, just typing in “Apple lawsuit” or “Facebook lawsuit” will bring up countless results. Adding the name of the person bringing the lawsuit will narrow those down substantially.
Find survey and infographic sources
A good chart or infographic will cite where its data comes from, so you can make sure that place exists and learn more about its research. Take this graph of where Americans are getting news, for example:
The graph cites the well-known Pew Research Center, along with the date the information was gathered. You can find the original source by typing the header “Television dominates as a news source for older Americans” into a search engine, then finding a result from pewresearch.org. In this case, Google returns a page dedicated to the chart, as well as a full blog post explaining the survey in more detail.
A bad infographic, meanwhile, might cite an easily manipulated online survey or a government agency that doesn’t exist. And a really bad one won’t even mention where the data comes from. If you really want to delve into what makes an infographic reliable, Forbes published a guide in 2014 that’s still relevant today.