originally from Reddit; source
So much of the misinformation that gets spread stems from online sources like Facebook and Twitter. Usually, the root of the data that produced the misinformation stems from a website.
Here are some cool tips to help you know what's probably real and what's probably not while you're surfin' the World Wide Web.
FactCheck.org is an unbiased (to my knowledge) place to check the facts. They even cover viral tweets and Instagram posts, like this one. It's an amazing resource in helping combat misinformation.
There's a well known repository of websites that have been marked as being known Fake News. You can find them here. It's a bit stale at 17 months old, but it's a good first step. Wikipedia also maintains a separate list here.
If what you're reading (or what you've been given) is on one of these lists, then it is highly likely that what you're reading is misinformation.
You received a Facebook post from a relative with a quote or JPEG that seems highly suspicious. Where did it come from?
If it looks like it came from a website, search for the exact phrase of the suspicious sentence or phrase on Google, like this:
“COVID-19 vaccines have microchips”
Notice the quotation marks. This tells Google that you want to perform an exact match search. Google will only show you websites that contain this exact phrase on the page.
Google supports a wide variety of search operators that can help you find information. Learn more about them here.
More often than not, this will provide search results of one to many news sources from which this quote was sourced. If you’re interested in finding the true source of the article, try using the “before:” operator in Google search or use Google Trends to narrow down the results.
A significant amount of misinformation comes from Twitter. While Twitter is harder to navigate than Google given the absolutely insane amount of data they process, it isn’t impossible.
First, see when the Twitter account of the user that posted the article was created.
Next, try and look at some of the user’s early posts. This might give you more insight into their connections or motivations. You can use Twitter’s advanced search to help you here; learn more here.
If your source is coming from a website, you might be able to find out who owns what by conducting a WHOIS on the domain. While most savvier web administrators will use their hosting provider’s privacy protection feature to mask ownership, some don’t. This can help you identify who’s behind what.
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) maintains an online WHOIS tool for this purpose. You can find that here.
Regardless of whether a website’s domain ownership is private or not, that website you’re looking at probably costs money to host. More importantly, generating enough content to maintain a sizable social media following costs money. And we all know that money has to come from somewhere!
I like to check the “About Us” page of a site that I’m looking at. This will usually give you a list of people behind the site. Bigger publications will have a Board of Directors that oversees operations. If you have time, this is a good place to play “Follow the Money”.
Do they run or participate in large non-profits or think tanks that divert significant resources to a specific agenda or ideology?
Are they related to or connected with politicians or other business interests that have patterns?
All of this, and more, can sometimes be answered by playing “Follow the Money.”
Most highly-trafficked websites will use Google Analytics to collect information on user engagement and trends, like the pages that people are looking at most or the elements on a page that are being clicked on most often. This information is collected by way of a JavaScript function that executes “client-side,” or on your computer. Google Analytics, or “GA,” uses a globally-unique ID to correlate which website data belongs to what website. Because this script executes client-side, the GA ID must be embedded onto the webpage.
Some websites embed their GA into the source code of the page. To see if they do, go to DNSLytics and plug in the domain. You might find other domains that have been created by the same web administrator, which could produce some interesting results!
Note that bigger websites, like Reddit, run their own “click-farms” and analytics data warehouses. This method won’t work on websites that do this.
The biggest defense against being manipulated by fake news isn’t technical! Use your brain, actively seek dissenting opinions, and make your own conclusions!
I realize that most won’t have the time to do a full workup on a single news article. However, you can glean a lot of information on what “the other side” is saying just by sorting by Controversal here on Reddit. Most of the time, this (and some links that those posters will provide) is enough for you to get a “360 degree” view into a specific issue, which should be enough for you to form your own opinion.
If you find yourself unwilling to do this (because you don’t want to hear what the other side is saying), then you might be in the process of being manipulated! Don’t let emotions blind you from the facts!
If you’re thinking “Wow, this is a lot of time to just get at the truth,” then you’re right! It is a lot of time! Unfortunately, given how quickly information spreads on the Internet these days (it took me 12ms to reach Twitter’s edge network from Houston in California; light is WAY faster than this!), the quantity of information out there, and the finite amount of time we all have, it is very easy to let headlines drive your decision making. If you really want to know where you stand on something, you have to make the time.
Coming soon.