A Millennial’s Perspective on How We Can Put An End to Misinformation on the Internet
One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts. There’s a well-known senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and one time he was debating one of his less capable colleagues and the guy said, “Well Senator Moynihan that’s just your opinion. And I have mine’ and Moynahan says ‘Sir you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts…we are operating in completely different information universes. If you watch Fox news you are living on a different planet than you are if you, you know, listen to NPR. It used to be.
- Barack Obama on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman
I believe we underestimate that the internet is in it’s very early stages, and we overestimate what it is that computers have the capability to do, and under value the principles on which certain platforms were built. At the same time we don’t put enough stock into the fact that these platforms have had astronomical growth numbers, and because of the growth, certain problems either were not as big as they are now, or may not have even come up until the platforms reached critical mass.
- Lance Mason
“I was under the impression that Twitter would be the mechanism by which truth was told around the world. If you are getting all of your information on algorithms being sent to your phone it is reinforcing whatever biases you have which is the pattern that develops. There was an interesting experiment that someone developed during the revolution taking place in Egypt, in Tahir Square. Somebody took a liberal, a conservative, and quote unquote moderate. Egypt, type it in. And for the conservative it came up ‘Muslim Brotherhood.’ And for the liberal it came up ‘Tahir Square’ and for the moderate it came up vacation spots on the Nile. But whatever your biases were, that’s where you were being sent. And that gets more and more reinforced over time. . . at a certain point you just live in a bubble and that is why our politics are so polarized right now.”
- Barack Obama on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman on Netflix
“Fake news is the common term but there’s all kinds of misinformation not necessarily fake news but maybe spreading [inaccurate information]. . . The difference between a difference of opinion or a political belief, and a difference in wrong facts is really hard to suss out. . . and that’s when people are calling for news to have editorial guidelines, and an area where most tech companies are saying it’s not something that fits in our model or we would really be good at. I think the facts that tech companies have to accept is there are judgments being made down the line. In my opinion the most nefarious feedback loop that drives belief in misinformation on the internet and media in general is that it’s all driven by advertising, and its all free, and attention is valued. And if you can generate attention than you can get paid and you don’t get paid more if it’s attention based on if someone consciously chose to pay attention or if you scream fire in a theater you still get paid. Most of fake news some was driven by ideological beliefs, a ton of it was generated by people making a buck on ads. And who was sending them money? It was the major ad platforms. It was these tech companies. So that is a fundamental problem with our information eco system. Is that attention gets rewarded not quality of information. “
- Medium CEO Ev Williams in an Interview with CNN Senior Tech Correspondent Laurie Segall
There is an underdeveloped space in the internet one where I believe most of the misinformation on the internet comes from that can be solved in a relatively simple solution however the implementation of which I believe would take the help of multiple people with backgrounds in several different spaces. To illustrate I will begin with an example of a very popular book written by a critically acclaimed author.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell makes the claim that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach mastery in any given field. Even the sentence I wrote is paraphrasing. And that is precisely the point. I can say the words:
“Malcolm Gladwell believes anyone can become world class and he has scientific data to prove it. So find one thing and work extremely hard at it and in 10 years you will be at the top of your field.” And if I have credibility with the people that follow my posts, they can take that quote, run with it, and shape their entire lives around a quote that must be updated with several bits of information. But the only way for that information to be updated, is for everyone to have access to the book. And the only way for everyone to have access to the book is to pay for it? Ironically I believe the solution is a paywall, but I will explain more in further posts. (For context all of Ev Williams’ posts hint at why this is so).
You see, sharing ideas on the internet (in Medium), tweeting, or on Instagram (where people continuously take snapshots of books, add quotes that people really didn’t say and throw a picture of them from Google on said quote is not uncommon) can take place without context. I could tweet:
Depending on the time that I send that tweet, people could think that I am posting about something going on in politics yada, yada, yada. But my point is you have no idea why I put WOW. If it wasn’t for this writing this post you never would have known.
The fact of the matter is that when ideas are published some people just wont click to read the full article — which is okay, not everyone will read everything — this comes down to quality. But for important matters, where important claims are made. And critical ideas are shared, access matters!
My understanding of Capcha as explained by Luis Von Ahn has explained that it is difficult for computers to read certain characters, however I believe this section of the publishing of information really shouldn’t be that hard and my perception is it is taking place mainly because of the paywall that exists in the traditional publishing industry. I can’t comment on the claims made in Malcolm Gladwell’s book if I don’t have the full chapter/book for context. And if I am sharing the information with you, with the inability to give you the entire picture then I am doing you a disservice.
Of course those well informed will say that it is a part of sharing an idea that you formed that you add a quote and use the quote to make your point. I would agree. In many of my posts I use quotes to explain the truth that I am trying to communicate but there is something very different about using a quote to explain the truth and explaining all of the nuances and using it to craft a one sided picture.
The post that this is a response to illustrates the dangers of one dimensional thinking in depth.
The underdeveloped space I am discussing is the ability to cite information online, from books that is behind a content wall.
When I started Medium most friends of mine said, “OK, so you’re going to make it easier for people to write on the web? That seems like a checked box at this point.” Which is true, but it felt like the system wasn’t complete.
While it was easy to write on the web, technically, and we tried it at Blogger, our vision (then) was “everybody will have a blog.” Everybody will create a website. We’ll make that one, two, three easy and that will make sense. Everyone will want to do that.
It doesn’t make sense for everybody to do that. There’s still not a default. We’re trying to create a default for if you have something to say that’s not a little nugget that will fit in social media, and it’s not just for your friends. There’s not a default to put a story onto the world, or an essay, a thought, or a perspective that you want the world to see or that you want it to change minds.
Creating a website and becoming a publisher is a different intention. That’s a way more ambitious commitment. The vast majority of people, even the subset of people who have good ideas and the inclination to articulate them, they don’t necessarily want to become publishers, which is what becoming a blogger meant.
- Understanding Medium: Ev Williams On His Past, Future, and Current Obsessions Interview with John Battelle on NewCo
Currently people my age go to the usual platforms to share inspiration from books or articles they have read; conversations they have had; and topics in classrooms:
- Medium
. . . And as noted by Ev Williams CEO of @Medium, and Co-Founder of Twitter, Twitter has a certain feedback mechanism through which quality information does not rise to the top. Below Ev mentions the driving force behind creating platforms Blogger and Twitter:
“With both Blogger and Twitter, our ethos was really “Get more voices, and we’ll lower the barrier to put in your voice, your thought out in the world. In an aggregate, that’s going to be a good thing.” There’s a lot of evidence that there’s lot of good effects of that. ”
- Understanding Medium: Ev Williams On His Past, Future, and Current Obsessions Interview with John Battelle on NewCo
Twitter’s growth exploded, and no one could have predicted all of the consequences that could result from this kind of ability to share thoughts quickly and freely. As a result problems directly related to this freedom began to emerge such as:
- Abuse
- Misinformation
When you can say anything you want freely, clearly there is not much verification of:
- whether or not the information is accurate
- where the true source of the information is coming from
- kindness to others (trolling others for example, like the use of LeBron James’ reaction to JR Smith not knowing the score to Game 1 of the NBA finals to sum up a reaction to IHOP changing it’s name to IHOB)
I believe we underestimate that the internet is in it’s very early stages, and we overestimate what it is that computers have the capability to do, and under value the principles on which certain platforms were built. At the same time we don’t put enough stock into the fact that these platforms have had astronomical growth numbers, and because of the growth, certain problems either were not as big as they are now, or may not have even come up until the platforms reached critical mass. And the way to solve those problems is to have really intelligent people working on them who will think creatively and thoughtfully about how to solve them. All of these add time onto the solution of the problem being implemented.
Dealing with Misinformation
So the question becomes what can be done to help carve out new categories where quality information can rise to the top, while allowing those providing quality information to be rewarded.
“Our goal was, we don’t need more media, but we need better media. We need to reward people who want to spend time, not just on creating very simple things. Most of the Internet is driven by novelty. It’s short and shorter cycle of times. If something is not very, very fresh, it’s hard for it to get attention.”
- Understanding Medium: Ev Williams On His Past, Future, and Current Obsessions Interview with John Battelle on NewCo
I believe Medium is one part of the wave that will allow for that to happen.
Currently these are are the ways to publish ideas that you have:
- Extremely long form [books]
- Blogs
- Creating your own website and putting your blogs on that
- Writing for a high profile newspaper/magazine
- Publishing short to long form on Medium
- Publishing on Social Media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook)
But it comes as no surprise that the other piece is dealing with “fake news.” We have to ask ourselves what types of misinformation are most detrimental to society and then work backwards from there. I believe being able to actually critique important claims (such as the 10,000 hour rule by Malcolm Gladwell) is important as well. The ability to update the claim as new research comes out is critical. Because there could be someone who is age 14 right now reading Outliers and thinking all I have to do is put my head down and try to get 10,000 hours in but that alone does not lead to “success.”
Long Form Books
Publishing a long form book has become beneficial in particular for those with a lot of attention. This is because they can in effect cash in on the audiences they have built up in the earlier stages of the internet and as a result if their goal is only to cash in and make money on books sold, there is no recourse in regards to the information in the book.
A book that you believe will change the course of your life by providing some information that you don’t have doesn’t really have to deliver on it’s promise. More often than not it doesn’t. A lot of the books that i discovered as a youth, I should have been more delibrerate in asking the question how will the information in this book change my life instead of just attempting to satisfy my curiosity. Looking at the 50 books in my google play, the tens of books that I have in my bookshelf at home and the near 25 books that I have in my amazon kindle app the answer to the question became clear to me. The way in which these books would allow me to improve my life is by asking a better question and allow me to move forward with that new information.
It is very possible to build up an audience, write a book, then sell it and cash in on the audience you’ve built. But I think there is a critical category that is being squeezed out by the structure of the internet and content copyrighting. One where true discussions that come about as a result of points made in non fiction writing are not able to be addressed because those who would publish them don’t have a way of providing the full information to the reader unless they write out the full quote from the book and throw it in the content, or unless they are unable to cite this information effectively.
Medium has become an ideas exchange, where thinkers, creators, and those with a story to share come to find their audience, move people, and move us all forward.
