A LinkedIn connection of mine recently reposted a story about Sonya Curry, the mother of the extremely talented NBA player Steph Curry. I clicked through to the original post, which had been posted by a lawyer who runs a foundation and is a visiting fellow at a major university — let’s call her “Mary” (not…
According to the Washington Examiner: By Tuesday morning, 1.5 billion people had viewed the app in the iPhone App Store, with nearly 400,000 people receiving notices they were placed on a waitlist upon trying to sign up. Could this be true? When it comes to numbers, be skeptical It pays to understand the world that numbers…
If you see a screen capture of a tweet, you should immediately suspect its legitimacy. Here’s how to check if it’s fake or real. This is a real problem. A friend of mine, for example, posted this capture of a purported Trump tweet on her Facebook page (I added the orange “Fake” to the screen…
In epidemiology, “herd immunity” is the essential concept that prevents the spread of deadly viruses. Now that disinformation and fake news are viral, we need to start thinking about herd immunity for the health of the nation’s perception of reality. When it comes to actual viruses, here’s how herd immunity (also known as community immunity)…
I’m going to share some tweets with you. I’ll tell you who wrote them in a moment. “Today I’m announcing an important partnership that has the potential to transform America’s foreign policy – it comes from the heart!” “I am pleased to announce our new alliance with North Korea. Kim Jong Un and I are…
Quartz published an awesome analysis of how teachers are attempting to teach kids to spot fake news — and how bad we all are at it. Here are some highlights from the article: “In the age of fake news, here’s how schools are teaching kids to think like fact-checkers,” by Annabelle Timsit: About Stanford University…
In the US, the midterm election day is one week from today, November 6. Facebook says it will ban misinformation on voting. If you find this news item encouraging, allow me to discourage you. First off, the ban is limited in scope. Facebook is not banning fake news (as if such a thing were possible)…
According to the Washington Post, Facebook is rating your trustworthiness on a zero-to-one scale. Not only that, they won’t tell you how they rate people. Here’s why that’s a necessary first step in squashing the spread of fake news. First, let’s get this out of the way. Facebook is biased. All social media and search…
Facebook has joined Apple, Youtube, and Disqus in banning Alex Jones and yanking his InfoWars pages. Jones and his supporters are livid, claiming free speech violations, while liberals are wondering what took so long. The challenge here is that lying on Facebook is perfectly fine; only “hate speech” will get you banned. Let’s take a…