How to spot misinformation online

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Why and how are we subject to so much misinformation nowadays, and is there a way to spot the fakes?

February 20, 2024
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6 minutes Read

One of the best things about the Internet is that it is a vast repository of knowledge, and this wealth of knowledge is almost never just a click away. However, this unlimited access to information comes with its fair share of challenges. In today’s information age, we are bombarded with so much information that effectively identifying and filtering fabricated, manipulated, or otherwise false and misleading content is an increasingly challenging task.

Indeed, it has become trite to say that you cannot, and should not, take at face value everything you find online, including random articles, social media posts, right down to comments from self-proclaimed “experts.” The waters get even more complicated when you add deepfake content to the mix, as fake AI-enabled audio, images, and video clips can easily boost disinformation campaigns.

Speaking of AI-based deception, don’t count on ChatGPT and other tools based on large language models and trained on massive data sets from the Internet to always tell the truth or disprove false narratives. They have been shown to have an uncanny ability to agree with falsehoods and validate misconceptions, particularly if asked questions laden with misinformation, and that, ultimately, their power could be harnessed to create false narratives on a dramatic scale. Another concern is that chatbots “hallucinate,” meaning they spit out made-up responses and references. In other words, their answers need to be scrutinized too – and for good reason.

Poison the narrative

Currently, you may notice a tendency to misrepresent, misinform, distort the truth in creative ways, most often to cause polarization among certain groups of people for political gain or to attract people’s attention for other negative purposes, all primarily online . In essence, online information may no longer flow freely, as it is filtered and poisoned, to exert control over a narrative or to create a narrative that works in one’s favor, whichever works best.

Bad actors have chosen to weaponize this technique to control and modify certain information, distilling facts by inserting false data or fake news into online discussions and social media, which can then influence the real world.

For example, some forms of cyberbullying use online misinformation and the subjects of such bullying suffer real psychological and physical trauma. With social media, false rumors can spread outside of schools, affecting many more people and causing even more pain to those who receive them. Likewise, examples of racism and bigotry seeping into the psyche of the general population from online discourse is a trend anyone can notice, especially during election season, when disparate groups seek to politicize certain topics.

The sources of disinformation

Fake news and information can spread through various means. As the above examples suggest, online discourse is a major source, thanks to forums and social media, where anyone, whether a normal person or a bot, can share anything.

Indeed, bots spreading misinformation have become something of a concern in recent years, with a 2018 study confirming that Americans, for example, largely agree with the negative effects of bots spreading misinformation on social media . In fact, according to another report, around 47% of internet traffic can be attributed to bots, increasing year on year, with social media accounting for a huge number: you’re more likely to encounter a bot on Twitter (now than a real user, according to a study by Washington University in St. Louis.

Bots don’t need convincing to spread false information, and the more a dubious article or piece of data is shared and made visible to real people, the more likely it is to enter mainstream offline discourse. In the course of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, for example, many false narratives emerged, as troll factories stirred and spread their dictated points online, apparently trying to turn people away from supporting Ukraine, distorting reality by using fake fact-checkers or by spreading contextual image and video information.

If detected by political representatives, such fake news can have even more devastating effects and, in itself, can even have very real consequences, such as the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, attributed to an increased amount of politicization, misinformation and polarization in American society, driven by online activity further encouraged by political extremism.

Forms of falsehood

False information can spread in many forms and places:

• Articles/Reports: Depending on where you get your news, some people prefer subjective truths (more biased media) or outright fake sites created by malicious actors spreading false information.
• Social media: In this case, misinformation can spread in the form of articles shared by various sources such as fake news sites, commentators spreading fake news, or pages/groups created to contain such fake information to spread it among their members, who then share it beyond out of the group. Also interesting are users who masquerade as influential members of society, such as politicians or scientists, in order to be more convincing with their lies.
• Forum and comments sections: As with social media, it involves sharing links to articles, creating threads that advertise false information, or making posts that do the same. Polarizing comments spread within online communities such as on 4chan can be the drivers of extremism in the real world.
• Videos/Images: Any platform used to share video or image content can be used to spread misinformation in the form of fake news, recaps of harmful events, propaganda hidden in memes, doctored images, and biased documentaries, as well as through online personalities that thrive on social polarization. to push their content.

Also of concern is the use of deepfakes of edited images, videos or audio, which can be even more difficult to detect as fake, as highlighted in our recent article on audio deepfakes and their potential misuse in scams. Although created for research purposes, the deepfake highlights the dangers of encountering “stolen voices”, as it is very convincing, and shows how free AI tools like this one can use the likenesses of people of any shape for criminal activity.

How to manage misinformation or fake news

Reflecting on what we see and read online is the best method to counter the influence of fake news. Unfortunately, critical thinking is often not taught well in schools, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be self-taught at home.

But how exactly do you distinguish between a true story and an invented one? Some easy-to-spot clues can help.

• in the first place, stop and think on the information you find. Blindly believing what a “doctor” says about the effects of a vaccine or treatment online just because he wears a white coat in a video is incorrect, as anyone could play a doctor online. Likewise, consider what kind of miracle it would truly be if a three-eyed baby was actually born this year.
• Secondly, scrutinize and verify everything you encounter. Social media is often used to spread falsehoods and hoaxes, such as fabricated military draft documents, calling election results fraudulent, reenacting movie scenes as real events, claiming that all vaccines cause death, and the like. The best way to combat this problem is to check objective news websites and follow fact-checking pages that investigate hoaxes.
• Thirdly, put every piece of data into perspective. Using a variety of legitimate sources like those presented in the previous point, research and create your own opinion. By distilling various points of view, a person can create their own positions on critical topics, and with the power of the Internet, anyone can better understand something they find relevant and interesting.
• Furthermore, keep calm and try not to get provoked by a clearly biased opinion. While debates can get heated, just like regular bullies, online trolls thrive on provocation. Don’t try to legitimize their positions by “taking the bait,” as they say.

Finally, we recommend reading the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) brochure on disinformation tactics, as it is a very useful and informative collection, containing disinformation methods, tactics and ways to spot fakes with some real examples. By combining these methods, it should be easier to identify what is real and what is not.