Fake News
Chris, Peter, Fraser and Nick discuss Fake News. Can we believe a word of it?
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics, and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer, and I'm here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill, and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And this week, we're discussing the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II. So, Peter, can you tell me your reaction to the recent passing away of our monarch?
Speaker B:Well, just in case she has actually died by the time we've released this, we are deeply sorry for the royal family, and we wish the new king a very happy and long reign.
Speaker A:And deeply sorry for making any light of it as well.
Speaker B:And making any light of it, actually, yeah. But we've been talking a lot about fake news recently, and what it what it tells us about information and how information is shared, how information is reported. In light of lots of fake news about Hillary Clinton during the election, fake news, possibly fake news around the way that Trump supporters numbers have been reported at the inauguration. Lots of always fake news about climate change and whether to believe it or not. And to the point now where it's reached a level of consideration and the Labour Party has launched an investigation and a response from the government was there's going to be an official inquiry into fake news and what it means for social impact and things. And back in December, Mark Younger, the chief of MI6 said in a speech of a rare sort of press engagement that fake news is an effective subversive mechanism that could be used to further aims of regimes and governments that we don't like very much.
Speaker A:So, in summary, fake news is a thing.
Speaker B:Fake news is a big thing. And most people have probably heard of it. But most people, a lot of people probably don't know what to trust and why to trust it. And that's, I think, what we want to talk about today.
Speaker A:Okay. So, Chris, you look like you want to come in.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, I mean, what I'm most interested in is what is new about fake news? What distinguishes fake news from what we've always had, which is lies or misinformation. And I'm not altogether sure I understand the distinction other than it's technological propagation now through social media. It's much easier to move information around and also some of the new technologies that are coming on board that enable you to very convincingly fake photographs or even video of individuals and audio so that it actually appears like you're witnessing something happening, which never happened. But beyond that, my feeling is we've always had fake news. We've always had our tabloid press and Freddie Star ate my hamster. And we've always had to deal, even prior to the existence of newspapers, had to deal with trying to verify information we receive as correct or false. So so I'm interested in exploring what's new about this
Speaker D:phenomenon. Are we absolutely sure Freddie Star didn't eat someone's hamster? I mean, do we know that's not true?
Speaker C:We don't know 100% it's not true. No, because he could have eaten a hamster and kept it quiet.
Speaker D:It's the sort of thing that wouldn't surprise me if he had done it. I don't think he's ever flatly denied it.
Speaker C:The story was eventually concluded to be false, but that's not to say he didn't eat a hamster on another occasion.
Speaker B:I did hear him on, I think it was Desert Island Disc or something similar, and he said that it didn't hurt his career, that story.
Speaker D:Well, no, given that the only thing anyone knows about him is that he ate a hamster once. So, yeah. No, I think if I had to guess why it's suddenly a big thing, I think the key technological change, obviously, in the distribution of information has been that it's suddenly free to effectively broadcast. And, you know, in the past, news organisations recognised that they had a sort of long term incentive to try and be generally reliable, to try and not be. And, you know, the newspapers that didn't do that, like the Daily Sport, made a living out of basically being fairly honest and upfront about the fact that their news stories were kind of made up. And they weren't seriously attempting, you know, to look like real news. But, I mean, you know, the thing is that news companies themselves had quite a big infrastructure dedicated to making sure, and in fact, you know, norms of behaviour for journalists to make sure that by and large, that there was not, you know, complete and utter rubbish coming out in the newspaper. The difference now, of course, is that anyone can set up a website, call it a newspaper and put whatever the hell they like on there.
Speaker A:So, hold on. I mean, I think maybe to paraphrase what you were saying, the difference is, is Freddie Star ate my hamster? No one's kind of meant to believe that, or maybe it's slightly tongue in cheek anyway. Whereas something like Hillary Clinton is involved in a child abuse ring, or something like that, is perhaps meant to be real, and people are meant to believe it. So maybe that's one thing. But the second thing is, is that, well, what's changed? And if there's always been fake news around, isn't it that there's just a greater prevalence of different channels from which, from one, whereby, where people get their news from, but also two, and this is a point I'm not sure on, and we've talked about before, is that there's more division, or there's more partition in where people get their news from. So someone might be getting all their fake news, all their news from one area that's all fake. Is that something as well? So let's have Peter.
Speaker B:I think you're right. I think there's something there, Fraser. I think, and relating to Chris's point about social media being a major channel for information people consume, there is a, it's well understood that people, it's easier. It's just cognitively less hard to assimilate information that already backs up a particular bias, a particular point of view that you've got. So there's going to be a natural market for people wanting to be told a certain thing. So all one has to do is set up a website, making more of that stuff, and it will have, it will meet success. I think it also relates to the, this sort of, this anti-expert agenda that's going on, where maybe, you know, you maybe you have an anti-establishment point of view because of recent events. You want to seek out a source that not necessarily backs up your point of view, but an alternative source that's not the Times or the BBC. So a sort of an independent, inverted commas, news website. But I think there's also a social element that with social media, perhaps you're more likely to take on board stuff that your friends and family share with you. And they will have the information that comes from them will have a higher weighting than stuff that comes from a news source that you've not, have no personal relationship with.
Speaker A:Well, actually, sorry to interrupt. I know you're about to come in, Chris, but let's do a quick survey. So has anyone here ever read any bit of news, which then turned out to be what everyone said that actually this is fake news? Has anyone here? Has that happened to anyone? Read it or believed it? Read it. Well, yeah, of course. No, but read it, not sort of reading about it being fake news, but actually read something and go, oh, wow, that's happened. And then, or is it? Could that really be true?
Speaker D:Yeah, but if as soon as it looks exciting enough, I think the first test is always is the first time hearing about this from some link on Facebook. You know, that's the first test. If something really astounding only appears on my Facebook feed and not, for example, through, you know, I haven't heard it on the radio or somebody hasn't emailed it to me or something. That's the first test, but you, everyone should always immediately go to Snopes or go to PolitiFact or some other fact-checking website to check those things. And I always do. I mean, whenever it's, if it's exciting enough for me to say to someone, hey, did you hear about this thing? I always check it first. And a lot of the time it's, you know, it does turn out to be.
Speaker A:And do you see this on your Facebook feed first?
Speaker D:Yeah, I mean, you get loads of things.
Speaker A:I've never seen any fake news on my Facebook feed. That you know of.
Speaker B:I think, I think Nick's a clickbait, you've got a clickbait habit. Yeah. He's picked up loads of things. I just worried about what you're subscribing to.
Speaker D:No, I tell you, well, I can answer that. I'm actually, it's actually the Snopes, the Snopes Facebook page. I don't know what Snopes is. What's Snopes? Snopes is the premier urban myth checking website. So you need to, it should be on your favourites list. And because I subscribe to that group, there's always millions of people saying, you know, is there any truth to this? And it's a link to some webpage saying that Barack Obama is actually, you know, a lizard. And so I see quite a lot. Yeah. I see quite a lot of this stuff, you know.
Speaker A:So sorry, I'm sorry. I really want to come to you, Chris. Sorry. But, but I just, isn't that, I, I'm going to make a statement. I don't think I will ever be victim to fake news. Okay. And the reason why is because I get my news from about four different places, all of which I trust pretty much and are generally established to be pretty trustworthy. And I just don't get it from anywhere else. So I can't see how I would ever be susceptible to this.
Speaker B:The Mirror, the Daily Sports, Daily Mail, the Dandy.
Speaker C:But I mean, there are quite, there are quite often cases of faked news stories getting into the mainstream press and being propagated by the mainstream press. So I don't, I don't think that, you know, insulates you entirely from, from fake news. I think to me, what I think we're really experiencing is a naivety about a new technology that we will soon be over. I think fake, fake news is going to die quite quickly because I think people will spot, spot the signs of it. I mean, when we were saying this is a new thing, it's, it's opposing as official and it's, you know, it's trying to put itself across as official news. And I thought straight away back to, you know, political pamphleting and if anyone's read Gore Vidal's novel Burr, where he talks all about the, in fact, the, the narrator is a sort of political pamphleteer. He writes, you know, sort of scandalous information about, about politicians. And, you know, there was, there was a real industry in sort of post post-revolutionary US politics of creating fake, fake news about political, you know, sort of actors. And, and I dare say what happened was people evolved their sense of what was real and what wasn't real and perhaps moved, you know, back towards some verified way of, of checking news and objectivity and journalistic integrity perhaps became more valued after a spate of this type of thing than they were previously. And I, I think that's what we will, we will see with fake news is that people will start to use heuristics like, did I get this directly from my Facebook page or did I get it through some other source? And we'll start to, to become attuned to what, what, what the flavour of fake news sort of seems like. But for me, the most concerning thing is that we're not a long way away from somebody being able to entirely create a fake video. And in fact, there's a, there's a good example of this in, in Iraq fairly recently of an explosion which happens and then individuals run past the explosion and lie down on the floor and pretend to, pretend to be injured. And that's then filmed and this gets into, into the news. So I, you know, I think being able to see things with our own eyes that are not true is, is going to be a, a real change in, in, in our ability to.
Speaker D:Yeah. I mean, I think if we think about the theory of deception for a sec, I mean, there's, there's actually sort of two things you can do. What you're trying to do is induce some kind of decision error on someone's part. So whether that's, you know, sticking your military forces in the wrong part of France or getting someone to vote for you or getting you to bet when you should be folding in poker or even just buying an inferior product in the shops. There's two, there's two things you can do. You can either try it. You can, there's sort of straightforward imitation where you're trying to induce a false belief in someone's mind. You're trying to make them believe something which isn't true. In other words, sort of shift their, their, the probability that they put on various things so that all of the, all of the probability is somewhere else. So, you know, classic example would be trying to, trying to convince someone that, you know, there aren't tanks in one forest and that the tanks are somewhere else. Something like Operation Mincemeat, you know, when they, when they planted during the war, when the, when the British planted false information about where the invasion of Europe was going to be on, you know, on a dead body and let the, let the, effectively let the Germans, you know, find that information. That there's, but there's also obfuscation. Now that, that's hard. So imitation is really hard, but there's also obfuscation, which is basically trying to reduce the information value of signals across the board. So, you know, kind of example of that would be something like chaff, which is what aeroplanes spray out to try and confuse heat seeking missiles. They don't try and make the missile think the plane's somewhere else. What they do is just, is they just make it impossible for the, for the plant, for the missile to know which part of the sky the plane is actually in, you know, and that's actually, I think that's the, that's the effect, you know, when you have this dilution, that's the, that's the effect of, of fake news at the moment. But the interesting thing is that it always goes in that direction, so you can't do Operation Mincemeat twice, right? Because as soon as people realise it's a deception and it's possible to do that deception, then all it does is next time people go, well, this might be true or it might not. We don't know. This could be deception. It could be real. And, you know, the point is that up until fairly recently, you could more or less trust things on the internet. We've got to the stage now where people have realised, oh, actually there's lots of people out there trusting things on the internet. I think just like, as Chris was saying, just like the boy who cried wolf, you know, eventually you realise that, that the signals you previously interpreted as a reliable news story can be produced very easily by something which is not true. So we're going to end up in a situation where effectively you can't trust anything on the internet and we have to come up with ways of creating that trust or sort of reinventing that trust. But there is always that evolution, you know, things that start out as imitation just end up eventually creating obfuscation.
Speaker A:I think there's a problem with your analysis, but I'll come back to that in a moment. Peter.
Speaker B:And I think that's where technology and social action will have a big part to play. So technology for, so if you want to verify a video is real, you can encode it in such a way that you can prove that the video came from a certain place, has not been edited and has not been changed in the same way that you can verify bank transfers on the internet. So technology is a part to play there, but the services such as Snopes could extend and there may be such things already, but some sort of browser plugin that gives you a kind of red, red, amber, green warning on, on news websites about how trustworthy they are based on historical, historical performance in terms of accuracy and predictive power. Then these, these are things that lots of people would be very willing to pay for. And so there's a market to create one.
Speaker A:Okay. Yep. That makes sense. But as you were speaking, Nick, one thing that occurred to me is that your analogy works well, if we assume that we're all rational actors, right? And that we're interested in the veracity of, of, of our new sources. But what about, to use your example, it maybe doesn't translate very well, but if the, if the rocket or the person who manufactured the rocket or fires, the rocket doesn't care if it shoots down a plane, what if that person, all they want is for the rocket to explode. Okay. Now you probably actually wouldn't want that, but let's just assume that for the moment, because I think a potential issue here is the, and the point I'm trying to make is this is all very well. If you want your, if, if, if you want to read news and be sure that it's accurate, but what if you're more interested in reading the kind of news that confirms your views and that's really all you care about? Yeah. If you're a moron, I've got, I don't have anything
Speaker D:to say to you. But the problem is... Don't listen to this podcast. I don't. No, no, no, no, no. No, I agree. There's many people out there who don't care if the news is true.
Speaker A:Sure. But that's my point. What's the problem if you've got millions of morons who voting for, for the wrong thing or for a poor option? So isn't there a wider systemic issue is, is if, if you want to cure your society of believing fake news, if you've got millions of morons voting for the wrong thing.
Speaker D:I know it might look a bit like I'm being a metropolitan elite here, so I need to be careful. But I, I look, there's always been people who are, it's where it's more, you know, politics and belief and inverted commas is more about tribal affiliation than it is about, you know, trying to believe things that are true. That's not going to change. I mean, that's always going to be there. I don't think that, I don't think that's our target market really, when we're trying to fix fake news. Because, you know, you always, you, we've, there's been, there's been, you know, I mean, conspiracy theories and, and other kinds of, you know, persistent false beliefs around for, for decades. And, you know, people believe those things because they like it, not, not because they'd like it to be true, not because they think it actually is.
Speaker A:Sure. I want to come to Peter, but all I'll say is I'm just worried there's more morons around these days than there used to be. That's all I want to say. Peter.
Speaker B:Well, I mean, I don't think we need to fix it. To pick up a bit on Nick's point. I mean, what the objection I think you have, Fraser, is when, when things masquerade as news, which are actually just fiction. It's just, it's just a form, it's a new form of entertainment. You can see it that way, like that. It's just a sort of a way that people get a distraction from what's actually going on in the world. The problem is, is when they use it to inform decisions that affect other people. That's, that's, that's at the point where technology and legislation, things need to intervene to, to, to redress that balance. But if people are happy to read christianscience.com or whatever, that, that, that, that gives them this particular point of view, that reinforces a particular point of view, let them. Why not? But at the point where they, they are in charge of defying some piece of policy that affects millions of people's healthcare, then we should care. It's like, well, what sources do you use to inform this decision? What was the process you went through? Maybe, maybe we should consider using other, other sources.
Speaker A:I think we, we worry if the, the person, if someone ends up voting for the sort of person who might make those incorrect decisions. That's what worries me. Chris?
Speaker C:Yeah. Well, I, I, I just think it's very difficult to separate, uh, the creation and, um, or indoctrination into a belief system, whatever that, whatever that is, uh, through these types of information. And then suddenly to say, okay, now, now this is, this is a real world decision. I'm now going to forget whatever my prejudices are that have been, I don't think they see, I don't think they compartmentalize their world in that way. And I, I, I think, um, I think it is sort of, it is something we should be concerned about the, the veracity of, um, information and, and, uh, people's ability to separate something that is generally accepted by society to be correct. And something which has been entirely made up.
Speaker A:I think, I mean, my take on this is, is, is education policy. That's, that's what I think. But anyway, look, we need to wrap up. Um, I want a conclusion from someone, uh, Nick?
Speaker D:Well, I suppose it is, you know, we're in a situation where we are discovering that, you know, actually the internet is just like any other information channel. You can, you can make, you can, you know, you can make things that look like, uh, they've come from one thing, uh, but haven't, you know, that every information channel is vulnerable to that. We're just sort of waking up, I think collectively to the fact that, um, you know, the fact that the internet makes it, makes it, if anything easier, it's quite a low bandwidth, uh, you know, form of communication because most of it is words. Um, so we're going to, but the solution, just like we have managed to come up with ways of, um, of, uh, making, of, of providing, working out which types of information are credible, we, we will have to come up with a sort of technological solution for this. I think Peter's idea about, you know, a kind of some sort of centralized approach, I don't think is, I, I'm, I'm not sure that's sustainable on the internet because it's just so hard to regulate. But I think there may be, you know, systems yet to emerge where, you know, people can actually perhaps prove, you know, prove their identity in some way. Um, and that, you know, certain people's or past record is such that they've proven good at judging which things are, are real and which things are fake. And, you know, we can rely on those. So instead of having one centralized age, age, agency, we effectively collectively kind of decide, um, on, you know, who to trust. And, uh, you know, if some, if, if someone has just rated something as, if, you know, if 100 new, um, accounts suddenly appear and rate something as reliable, but you've never heard of these accounts before, you know, that we shouldn't put very much weight on that. So I think, I think it's a kind of collective, collective judgment process that we need to, we need to work out how to solve.
Speaker A:Okay. Peter, I still think that leaves the issue of what if lots of people don't care about whether they're getting it correct or not. What can we do about that?
Speaker B:I don't. Yeah, no, we can't. Yeah.
Speaker D:And I'm not sure we ever will be able to solve that.
Speaker B:We can't, we can't. I don't think we're in, anyone's in the business of telling people what to think. But if people want to be easily led, then let them, you know, they're not going to be the sorts of people.
Speaker D:I worry about the consequences of that though. Yeah. But Fraser, they're not going to be listening to this podcast.
Speaker A:Well, yeah, I know that, but I just worry about, I just, I just worry about millions of people voting for the wrong thing. I don't know.
Speaker B:Look, I think, I think there are, there are, just to finish, there are, um, to, to the education point, I think there is an education point, there is, there's a point about helping people and empowering people to be cynical about things that they read and see and what, and then instilling people a desire to fact check for themselves. And I think, um, the real inverted commas, news websites could do a lot that they don't currently do. There's a, I know having, doing, doing normal reading on news websites and things, there's a, there's a, there's a, uh, a trend to once you've got a reader, capture them and keep them there. And often they were, they cite other newspapers, other things, but never actually include a link to the thing on the website that it just doing that simple thing would make it much easier for people to verify whether or not something is actually true.
Speaker C:Just very quickly, I just want to say, I think, um, you know, actually, uh, we, we spoke about it earlier on, you know, um, these websites tend to send you to something else that looks like what you've just read. So here's another video of the same flavor that you've just, you've just seen. I'd like to see these technologies start to say here's, here's the opposite point of view. Here's, here's something, you know, very different from what you've just, just looked at and, and to try and build that behavior in.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, the precisely the sorts of, um, organizations that would take that rigorous approach are the kind of ones are the opposite of the ones that are saying the fake news. If you see what I mean, it's kind of a self
Speaker C:But they still have to use a platform, you know, a widely used platform, which, uh, you know, like YouTube or whatever it might be. And those, those platforms themselves could, could instigate something.
Speaker D:I mean, it's an arms race, of course, you know, we will always be locked in this, uh, deceivers and sort of decoders arms race. And even let's assume that Chris's suggestion takes off and every website that we trust has to have some link to something we, you know, we disagree or which, which kind of disagrees with that, what was on that webpage, you know, fake news will just come up with a way of making it look like they've done that.
Speaker A:We'll, we'll have to finish there. But what I'd like to say is that, um, uh, apologies, Nick, and it was remiss of me for not saying congratulations. Cause I know you, you've got to leave here quite quickly because congratulations on being the finalist in, um, in Miss World, uh, representing England on that.
Speaker D:So yes.
Speaker A:And I'm, I'm on the, on my way to the Queen's funeral, actually. Yes, yes. Busy day. Okay. Um, thank you everyone. You've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast with Aleph Insights, with Nick Hare, Chris Wragg, and Peter Coghill, and myself, Fraser McGruer. Um, thank you for listening as always. And until next time. Bye-bye.
