Fake news will decline when we start asking for help

Social media are able to rapidly transmit instances of disinformation, ranging from the amusing to the sinister.

One of the more amusing examples involved the claim that Venus, Jupiter, and a crescent moon would align to form a smiling face in the sky this Saturday, May 16.

Yet any astronomer could inform you that Venus, Jupiter, and the moon will be in entirely different locations on that date.

Our social media technologies make it very easy to share fake news. With just one click, we can multiply the cacophony of lies.

What we need instead is a way to get with one click a “fact check,” by which items can be referred for investigation by people who possess the necessary expertise.

For example, pressing a fact check button could reveal that although Mercury and Venus will be in close conjunction on May 22 – just half a degree apart and visible about 10 degrees above the horizon – there will be no smiley face.

Two problems make such a software feature difficult to implement. The first is a problem of the intellect: our new technologies give us an intoxicating sense of power as individuals, making us feel like we don’t need experts. We feel as if we can judge for ourselves since we have access to so much information at our fingertips.

But equality of access does not guarantee equality of intelligence. Neither does it guarantee depth of knowledge, which can only be built up over many years of specialized experience.

The second problem concerns the will: humans are inclined to abuse power. Not only that, they will congregate in groups to find a designated scapegoat they can all target.

This mechanism allows the group to escape responsibility. If everyone agrees on the target, then a bully is empowered by the mob and the mob is empowered by the bully.

It’s a vicious circle, allowing everyone who participates in it to be satisfied. They all get to discharge vengeance upon their designated villain.

You can see how difficult designing a “fact check” button is. People don’t know what they are ignorant of, and they don’t want to know. They want to believe what they want to believe and are reluctant to admit someone else knows more than they do. They want their prejudices and biases confirmed and amplified, not regularly challenged. They would rather play the role of judge and instantly decide for themselves. Our technology is programmed with this infernal default setting: thumbs up or down – you get to be the emperor, deciding life or death.

Hence the popularity of conspiracy theories. People get to join a mob that magically confers invulnerability upon their views. Conspiracy theorists can never be wrong, because they never really seek “truth,” only rationalizations for group attacks on designated scapegoats.

Now imagine if, instead, there was a “vote for a fact check” button? In other words, a request that the “fact” be looked into by others. The vote for fact check button would accompany not just amusing disinformation (like the smiley face in the sky), but also more threatening disinformation, like the recent virulent video about the pandemic.

Pressing the fact check button could instantly serve up trustworthy analysis. Instead of searching a site like Snopes.com for a fact check, the button could do it for you, since you just voted for that service.

Because people would rather feel empowered than humbled, they don’t want to press a button that implies making a profession of humility or ignorance. So they could instead be offered a “vote for more information” button, knowing it would often serve up more of the information they may be reluctant to hear.

Yet, because people prefer to rely on a worldview they have already adopted, they might resist pressing a button that threatens to complicate their life. Therefore, it could be designed as a “vote for more investigation” button, which would be a valuable research tool to motivate news organizations.

The “vote for more investigation” would be like declaring you want to see more in-depth research on this topic, but you are prepared to be patient and to wait for clarity. Think of it as delayed gratification: instead of one stale doughnut now, you are holding out to get a dozen fresh ones later.

A sobre, fact-checked investigation, accompanied by an enlightening debate between competent experts, could then appear much later in your social media feed, as per your request.

I think this would be a service worth paying for, and people with as many different viewpoints as possible should collaborate on it, thereby serving the common good.

Then again, we could simply stick with technology’s default settings: “I like stupidity, and I’m taking you with me.”