Disinformation Wants To Be Free! Or... "I don't know shit for sure, and that's the way I like it!"

Hopeful open minded skepticism:

The understanding that we can't actually know anything for certain because we are
deeply aware that all information we receive apart from what we directly experience is filtered through other people's perceptions before it gets to us, and that, to some degree, it is unintentionally skewed or purposefully manipulated by noble or nefarious motivations or self-interest.

When I was a young man I came to the realization that the only source of information that I could trust completely was my own experiences.  All other information had to be consumed with the understanding that I could never absolutely know if it was factual. I could only rank the information, compare it to other sources and come to an opinion that I would need to keep flexible in case competing information challenged the rank I had previously given it. I started training my brain on this concept making it a deeply ingrained part of my belief system. The goal was not to become paranoid or untrusting but understand The flow of information, the motivations of the people presenting it and to avoid being misled or manipulated.

Of course, that was before the Internet. 

Perhaps because of this mindset, I made modest attempts to warn people at the onset of online self-publishing that we were entering a dangerous new age and that we needed to develop systems for vetting information. I tried to urge caution as I foresaw a world with astounding and frightening opportunities for those who would like to "shape" the thinking of people who were not as disciplined as I had made myself. I'm afraid that my warnings went mostly unheard, my audience was much too small to have any effect. Outside of the few half-interested friends, postings on message boards, comment sections of blogs and news sites that mostly no longer exist, I doubt I had any impact whatsoever. People who raised alarms like I did were very few and far between and quite unpopular. The much larger voices of the time were all about how wonderful and different the technology was and how the free flow of information was the most important thing. The idea of limiting information in any way was seen as sacrilegious. They used to say "information wants to be free!" I did not see the Internet as fundamentally "different", just a much more efficient way to do the same things we have always done, including misbehave. Unfortunately, disinformation also enjoys that same freedom.

I don't think most people are inherently bad, I think many times they are tragically misinformed. Because they have not developed or been taught the tools to be open-minded, empathetic, and skeptical, they are incapable of navigating the increasingly complex and confounding information landscape we all are now forced to live in. They retreat into simple and nonchallenging world views because the alternative is asking WAY to much of them.

I am seen by some as a clever person, but I find it very taxing to try to sort and categorize the information I am presented each day. It would be MUCH simpler to just join a group or listen to a single loud voice that "mostly" aligns with the way I feel about things and switch off the part of me that has to consider each point as a separate issue. This gives the handful of people who really want to push an agenda a powerful tool. 

I don't see things getting better very soon, sources that fact check content of the Internet are under attack themselves, this is not really surprising as the people who wish to distort facts can't abide by such institutions. But my question is why are there so FEW of them? Why are we not heavily invested in the business of sorting fact from fiction? Furthermore, who is continuing to do the fact finding that these sites use? Newspapers?! Increasing investigative reporting is getting downsized at news organizations. I have been watching a tv show that presents surprising facts about commonly held misconceptions in a humorous and entertaining way, but they often site 60 minutes as the source of the information... think about that for a second. Large numbers  of people are all watching the funny show... that presents facts... that were uncovered by real investigative reporters... from a show that very few people watch anymore. So what happens when I news sources like 60 minutes are gone for good?

We need more critical thinking. It needs to be taught.

We need more empathy. We need to encourage it in our young people.

We need to give people real tools to help them sort information on the web.

We should seek ways to bring people out of their information bubbles, we should all stop thinking we absolutely know what is true.


***Update November 9, 2016 at 6:40 PM***

Disinformation Wants To Be Free. How to we fix the "repository of all human knowledge" before it destroys us? I don't know the answer... I am just very mad tonight because I have been asking the question for two decades while people told me I was overreacting and it would "all work out", and that "truth will rise to the top". Now I find myself and my loved ones living in a cracked world brought on in part by people seeming to be more interested in the flashy gleam of a new toy than they were concerned by how it could harm what we had built. It would seem that nearly half of us believe a whole bunch of untrue garbage supported by self motivated cranks on the internet, and the other half believe a different set of untrue garbage ASLO supported by self motivated cranks on the internet. Who is to say which set of garbage is less untrue? You can't "prove" anything. People can find competing "facts" for every point and piece of evidence you provide. Sources? News media is a joke because they sold out journalistic standards long ago. Fact Checking is a dirty word. Techno-hippies and their damed belief that the internet would self regulate... yup it has settled into a perfect balance of truth and lies! The trouble is average people are give no way to tell the difference. Do I think it can be fixed? Yes... but people need to want to do it, they have to demand it, and they have to start NOW.

***Update November 10, 2016 at 7:38 AM***

Maybe we are in a transitional phase. People used to say "they couldn't print it if it weren't true" sometimes sarcastically, but often in earnest. Perhaps there's a large population of people who still believe that its literally true and believe to some extent that information found on the Internet must carry some weight. Maybe young kids born into a world saturated with tech will not have that same bias and will understand instinctively that most of what they find on the Internet needs to be met with a great deal of skepticism. At least a higher percentage of them will develop some immunity, but this still doesn't solve the problem of vulnerable people who because of medically related decline in cognitive ability, or just a natural lower intelligence have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction. Something that is becoming more time consuming to even the sharpest of us.


***Update November 11, 2016 at 12:38 PM***

A couple of weeks back I posted this blog entry discussing my dismay over people becoming overwhelmed by misinformation and not being given useful tools to break free of their information bubbles that they find much more comforting than trying to sort the purposely confusing sea of facts and lies floating about these days. 

Well today, while doing research on the ACLU I discovered this interesting site. http://www.procon.org Now the fact that I had never heard of it or seen anyone ever link to it somewhat proves my point, and it falls far short of the sort of in-line real time truthfulness ranking tool I imagine and hope could be ubiquitous someday. But in the mean time, I found it very helpful in understanding two sides of a complex issue.

I would like people to use it and spread the word about it. Perhaps it will not get the bad rap that fact-checking sites have recently since it presents both sides of an argument and lets the user decide

The Internet As A Digital Side Show

Welcome to the digital freak show! Feeling uncomfortable yet?

Untitled Shahn, Ben, 1898-1969, photographer. 

Recently I was reading back through some old posts I made on various message boards and I came across a thread from 2007 in which people where mocking the public behavior of a rising "internet star" who self described as being a highly functioning autistic. The person was using the internet to make a spectacle of themselves by posting videos of outrageous and potentially dangerous antics and people were eating it up and at the same time showing very little understanding or compassion for the underlying problems that could be leading to his admittedly unusual and potentially threatening behavior. The whole thing reminded me of something... and then it dawned on me, it's the new equivalent of the circus side show! And we thought we were soooo evolved... pft! We are doing the same crap. Voyeuristically watching others who are somehow different so that we can mock them or at best pity them, but with this new version, we are sparred the "indignity" of paying money to create this artificial chasm between "us" and "them", it is mostly free, and the best thing about it is that we can be as brutal as we want because we feel anonymous. We never have to look them or anyone else in the eye while doing it. So we are spared the shame and guilt we used to feel when we had to gather in public to try desperately to feel better about ourselves. Its all so private... and clean... and digital.

Ah, the magic of the internet.

Here is what I wrote back in 2007 that effectively ended the original thread dead cold...

"*Disclaimer: Doc is not an expert on brain disorders... he just has a few personal theories about them.* 

Assuming we take the information given at face value, the bottom line for me is that the person seems to have problems... possibly both physiological and psychological. For that reason, I don't know if I want to participate in mocking him publicly. 

He IS putting himself out there to be mocked for sure... but if we choose not to take the bait, then other people will be less likely to seek fame from encouraging ridicule of their shortcomings. And to be honest, I am not so sure he "gets" the underlying tone of his "popularity", he seems to be not entirely able to successfully interact socially after all. I wonder if any attention he receives satisfies a need in him, even if it is negative and can only add to his issues down the road. Will making him "famous" stop him from acting badly in public and getting arrested in places he goes to look for girls? I don't think it will. 

To me his "star status" just seems like a digital equivalent to an old circus side show. Something we as a culture thought we were beyond but in fact we are still starring at the people who are different from what is considered average because it helps us each individually feel more "normal". 

As far as him having psychological issues that go beyond being autistic, who is to say how much being autistic screws with your self esteem and general mental health? Aspects of your brain function may be normal or even superior to average but I think that could be a serious detriment to being otherwise balanced because you may have the ability to comprehend just how your autism effects your life and limits what you can accomplish. I think thats gotta mess with ya. 

Brain dysfunction has a wide range of effects on people and we are nowhere near being able to understand it fully. I think at some point in the future we will have a better grasp of just how unique and different each persons "mind" is and we look back on the idea of thinking that people are either "normal" or "abnormal" as very naive."

And Thus The Identity Crackdown Begins...

FaceBook has launched a new service that ties commenting on other sites to your FaceBook account. So if a website turns it on, (and I think many will make it the default) most commenters will no longer be able to post with anything but their ACTUAL identity.

I have encouraged people to be themselves online for years. I knew that everyone running around pretending to be 20 different people and acting in a range of bad behavior from impolite to horrid, would not be tolerated for long. People were just loading up corporate cannons with reasons for a siege on anonymity. I also knew that when it DID start to change it would probably be at the hands of a big powerful entity. Back in the 90's I would have thought MS would be the one, then maybe Google... but of course the big winner of all our data now looks like it will be FaceBook, Google only WISHES you were building such a detailed profile into their database compared to what you shovel into FB each day.

I am of two minds, I look forward to a day when there is two thirds less crap polluting the web, but of course I don't want to tie all my opinions, thoughts, hopes and dreams back to a single (clearly untrustworthy) corporation. I just wish more people had decided to act civilized and not made such a service an easy sell.

The internet is the MOST public place you will ever make your voice heard. I believe that anything you post may someday be attached to your actual identity and viewed by anyone. I am a firm believer that de-anonymization tools will largely remove the illusion of anonymity in the near future. So its best to act the way you would in any very public place. Your home, work, or even a bar, all seem to be much more private places than any place you post online... but strangely, others seem to imagine the internet as the most private of places and assume everything they post under a pseudo identity would never be tracked back to them... even long before all the successful de-anonymization research, I just could not see that lasting.

In real life we feel pained and sometimes shamed for the stupid things we do and say, I causes us to examine ourselves and hopefully grow, mature, and respect others. Being held accountable for what you say is a fundamental part of being a person that exists in society. Bringing that accountability to the internet is long over due. We can't have a more meaningful dialog without looking each other in the eye.