For this assignment, students should first read the article related to fake news and conspiracy theories in this timely article download(this article is actually really neat in that it describes how

https://www .nytimes.com/2018/03/22/opinion/facebook-spreading-ideas.html 1/2

https://ny ti.ms/2uc vVpp

OP-E D C O N TR IB U TO R

By M ic h ae l J . S oco lo w

M arch 22, 2018

W e ha ve a serious pr oblem, and it goes far bey ond “fake news.” Too man y Americ ans have no idea ho w to properly r ead a social media

feed. As w e’r e coming to learn mor e and more, such ignor ance seems to be plaguing almost ev erybody — regardles s of educ ational

attainment, economic clas s, age, race, politic al affiliation or gender .

Some very smart people ar e helping to spread some very dumb ideas.

We al l kno w this is a pr oblem. The recent feder al indictment of a Rus sian company, the I nternet R esearch Agenc y, lists the numer ous

ways Rus sian trolls and bots cr eated phony events and lev eraged social media to so w disruption throughout the 2016 pr esidential

election. New revelations about Cambridge Analytic a’s sophistic ated use of F acebook data to target unsuspecting social media user s

reminds us ho w complex the is sue has become. E ven the pope has w eighed in, using his bul ly pulpit to warn the world of this new global

evil.

But there are some r emarkably easy steps that each of us, on our o wn, can take to addr ess this is sue. By following these thr ee simple

guidelines, we can col laborate to help solv e a problem that’ s befuddling the geniuses who built F acebook and Twitter.

If the pr oblem is cr ow dsour ced, then it seems ob vious the solution wil l have to be cr ow dsour ced as w ell. W ith that in mind, her e are thr ee

easy steps each of us c an take to help build a bet ter civic polit y. T his advice wil l also help each of us look a lit tle less foolish.

1. N o l i n k? N ot n ew s! E very time somebody t weets “BREAKING ” a little bel l should go of f in your head. Befor e you ev en read the r est of

the news, look for the link. A ver age Americ ans almost nev er break news about big stories. E ven most pr ofessional journalists lack the

sour ces and experience to quickly v erify sensational information. If news br eaks on a truly import ant story, there should be a link to a

credible news sour ce. But I still regularly see t weets that ha ve no connection to r eality being r etweeted thousands of times b y people who

should know better. H ere’s but one example of completely fictional “news ” that was retweeted o ver 46,000 times. It in volv ed H aiti’s

supposed r eaction to Pr esident Trump’s r ecent insult:

It w as retweeted b y the H arvard la w pr ofessor L aurence T ribe. His r etweet w as retweeted o ver 2,000 times:

H ow t o Pre v e n t S m art P eop le F rom S pre a d in g D um b I d ea s

Sco tt M en ch in

Laurence T ribe

@tribelaw

Karma is catching up to #Trump : twitter .com/edkrassen/stat …

5,542 12:58 AM - Jan 16, 2018

2,002 people are talking about this 6/2/2020 Opinion | How to Prevent Smart People From Spreading Dumb Ideas - The New York Times

https://www .nytimes.com/2018/03/22/opinion/facebook-spreading-ideas.html 2/2

Yet ther e’s no evidence an ywhere that H aiti’s “high court” did this. T here w as no “ emergency” ses sion and ther e was no “ agreement to

unseal & r elease documents. ” The ev ent is fabric ated. Remember: N o link? Not news!

2. I kn ew i t ! If br eaking news on social media aligns perfectly with y our careful ly structur ed view of the w orld, then pause befor e liking it

or retweeting it. Wh y? Because you — lik e most of us — ha ve cur ated a per sonal news feed to confirm things y ou already suspected or

“knew .” If y ou didn ’t do this y ourself ( by unfriending people who dar ed argue politic s with you on your feed), F acebook and T witter ar e

doing it for y ou. They structur e your timeline to mak e it as agreeable as pos sible. Cambridge Analytic a’s suc cess w as pr emised on

building a distribution system t ailored to pr ecisely exploit the biases and pr econceptions of specified Facebook users.

But Cambridge Analytic a is the symptom, not the disease. T he larger pr oblem is that unpleasant and frustr ating information — no matter

how ac curate — is acti vely hidden fr om you to maximize y our social media eng agement. George Orw ell once noted that he bec ame a

writer because he pos sessed “ a facilit y with w ords and a po wer of facing unpleasant facts. ” Ther e’s no place for “unpleasant facts ” in our

social media univer se. W ere Orw ell ali ve toda y, he ’d r emind us of the terrible politic al costs caused by this dev olution in our informational

habits.

3. W hy a m I ta lk in g? M y wife is a psy chotherapist, and oc casional ly I skim her P sychother apy N etwork er mag azine. I r ead a piece b y a

therapist who r ealized his most ef fective communic ative moments often oc curred when he ask ed himself a simple question: “ Why am I

tal king?” I nevitably this question shut him up and al lowed him to absorb much mor e information. “Why am I t alking ” work s out to a

great acr onym: W AIT. If w e all just ask ed ourselves this simple question immediately befor e posting or retweeting , we’d al l be bet ter off.

T her e ar e numer ous reasons to participate in the public spher e, and everyone c an contribute something v aluable. But there’s also far too

much noise out ther e, and we need to think mor e seriously and realistically about the added v alue of our own communic ation.

These ar e three simple rules. Of cour se, they contradict every mechanism F acebook and Twitter uses to encour age our behavior on social

media. Being mor e skeptic al, eng aging mor e selectively and prioritizing link s to information provider s outside our social media silos wil l

hurt the bottom line of the social media giants. U sing social media in a more responsible manner might ultimately lea ve these companies

to r ot a way as they cede their ci vic responsibilities to the Rus sian trolls and bots dedic ated to polluting our discour se. If they won’t act, it’ s

up to us. If w e’r e col lectively smarter and mor e skeptic al about social media as an information deli very device, it wil l ultimately lessen the

influence that these corpor ations and trolls ha ve on our ci vic governance.

Michael J . Socolow , author o f “Six Minutes in Berlin: Broadcas t Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics, ” teaches journalism a t the University of Maine .

Follo w The N ew Y ork Times Opinion section on Fac ebook and Twit ter (@NY Topinion) , and sign up for the Opinion T oday ne wsle tter .

A version o f this article appears in print on March 24, 2018 , S ection A, Page 23 of the N ew York edition with the headline: The Spread o f Dumb Ideas