Solving the first one is, in my opinion, pretty much impossible on a large scale—it requires critical reading, original research and a great deal of trust in fact sourcing.
Solving the second one is Google's goal here, and it's an important one. The Comet Pizza incident [1] was emblematic of how blatantly fake news can affect real people. Moreover fake news is engaging: it legitimately competes with real news [2]. So yeah, I think the sub-problem is large and efforts to solve it are a big deal.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Ping_Pong#Pizzagate_cons...
[2]: http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/16/13659840/facebook-fa...
I'm not sure that's true. Before the election at least a 3rd of news articles shared by family members on Facebook were completely falsified.
Pictures of "Bernie Sanders" driving a sports car. Stories about Obama's mother in law collecting a lifetime pension for babysitting the kids etc...
Eventually the story spreads to people who actually believe it and will take action based on it.
A large percentage of my family truly believes Bernie Sanders drives a $100k sports car because they read it on Facebook. They believe that Obama's mother-in-law is getting a pension for acting as the White House babysitter. Some of them even believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya.
They believe these things because of they read fake news stories on Facebook.
It's self reinforcing. They vaguely dislike someone; they read a fake negative story on facebook about the person; they believe it because they already dislike them; they dislike the person more because of the fake news story; they read more outrageous fake news; they believe it because it fits their now more biased opinion of the person.
It's keeps going like this until they hate the person and will believe almost anything negative you say about them.
> It's keeps going like this until they hate the person and will believe almost anything negative you say about them.
Like that "Trump is afraid of stairs" story that CNN featured recently? ;)
If I say "smsm42's mom is fat", or "smsm42 is an idiot" that's trash talking.
If I say "smsm42 defrauded the US government by awarding his mother-in-law a pension for watching his kids", or "smsm42 passed a law that give Muslims free health insurance because their religion prevents them from paying for it", or "smsm42 wasn't born in the country he says he was born in and I have proof that his birth certificate is fake"--that's fake news.
In fact courts adjudicate the difference pretty much anytime someone brings a defamation suit. If you are unable to tell the difference, you can conduct this (potentially costly) experiment to see that other humans can usually tell the difference.
1. Find a civil litigation lawyer in your city. Let's call her Alice A. Attorney.
2. Take out an add in your local newspaper that says "Alice A. Attorney's mama is so fat that she gave Dracula diabetes."
3. Take out another add the next week that says "Alice A. Attorney is not a US citizen so her license to practice law is invalid. In addition she is untrustworthy because she embezzled money from her previous employer."
4. Wait and see which ad you're eventually forced to pay damages because of.
Not as much as you'd like it to be. In court, surely, maybe, though in court to get anything actionable you have to prove actual malice, which is not easy, and very very hard if one talks about a public figure.
If you are just shooting breeze on the internet, it would be super-hard to prove any malicious intent.
But that's what we're talking in courtroom. A place specifically designed to have procedures to rule between true and false. Most people outside of the courtroom do not behave like this. They won't apply "lack of reasonable doubt" or "preponderance of evidence" if they see an article trashing Trump (or Hillary, if you swing that way) on the internet. They won't research and double-triple-check the sources and quotes. They'd just share it because it feels good.
Actual malice is only required if it's a public figure being defamed.
>and very very hard if one talks about a public figure.
It's not any harder to prove actual malice when the person being defamed is a public figure than if the person being defamed is not a public figure. It's just only required if the person being defamed is a public figure.
>If you are just shooting breeze on the internet, it would be super-hard to prove any malicious intent.
I think you clearly missed the point of my previous post. It wasn't to try to prove to you that people spreading fake news are committing actionable defamation.
The point is that reasonable people are capable of distinguishing between fake news stories and farcical insults.
Saying that Obama is an idiot is an insult. Saying that Obama was born in Kenya because you have investigators on the ground in Hawaii who found evidence that his birth certificate is a fraud is almost definitely defamation (even though it would be difficult to prove that you acted with malice).
A large percentage of Trump supporters literally believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. They literally believe that he ordered Air Force One to pick up his dog. They literally believe that his mother-in-law gets a lifetime pension.
Sure it's possible that none of them actually believe these things in their heart of hearts, but if you ask them, they'll tell you they do. To an external observer they appear in every way to literally believe these things--if there is no externally detectable difference, is there a difference.
I'm also willing to donate $100 to a charity of your choice if you can find evidence that a significant portion, (let's say more than 25%) of fake news being shared on Facebook is just people doing it to say "look how fake this is."
This also means you argument is purely conjecture too.
Absent other evidence to the contrary, that is enough to convince me that people sharing fake news mostly believe it.
If you have some other evidence to present--please go ahead. Do the majority of your over 45, conservative Facebook friends and family regularly share fake news just to point out that it's fake?
Maybe it's a bigger problem, but you're not going to solve dishonesty and you're not going to solve all the cognitive bias and intellectual unsophistication that lets it work. The best you can do is nudge society in a good direction that pays off maybe a generation down the road. Let's focus on stopping our elections from being manipulated since that's a significant easy win in the short term.
> Honest question - has there been any research on how much reach and effect "true" fake news actually has? How big is that particular sub-problem, in reality?
You should watch the open hearing from the Senate intelligence committee from 3/30. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings
> Gentzkow and Allcott find that the most widely circulated hoaxes were seen by only a small fraction of Americans. And only about half of those who saw a false news story believed it.
http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/18/stanford-study-examines-...
Nobody's defending "true" fake news like that, but I think that kind of fake news is actually a very small part of the picture.
The much bigger problem is the subtler dishonesties we're discussing here. Because they're more widespread, harder to catch, come from sources that are regarded as reputable, and thus ensnare smarter people in their falsehoods.
Honest question - has there been any research on how much reach and effect "true" fake news actually has? How big is that particular sub-problem, in reality?