Fake News is Disinformation after all, Adaptive Disinformation that is

By Kay Mathiesen and Don Fallis

In our last blog post, we concluded that most fake news is bullshit rather than disinformation.  But we reached the conclusion using the dictionary definition of disinformation.  And there is reason to think that the dictionary definition is too narrow.

Most fake news is not disinformation according to the dictionary definition because most purveyors of fake news don’t intend to mislead anybody.  (They just want to make money.)  But Professor Fallis (2015) has argued that, when we define disinformation, we should not require that someone intend to mislead someone else.  Instead, we should only require that it be no accident that people are misled.

There are species of insects that have evolved to look like sticks or leaves.  These insects do not consciously intend potential predators to believe that they are flora rather than fauna.  However, it is no accident that potential predators are fooled.  The deceptive camouflage gives these insects an adaptive advantage.  In particular, they are less likely to be eaten.  As a result, the deceptive camouflage is more likely to continue into the future (because the genes that create it will be passed on to future generations).  Thus, even though there is no intention to deceive, it still seems like these insects are producing disinformation.  Professor Fallis (2015) calls it adaptive disinformation (as opposed to intentional disinformation).

Note: Sometimes, people don’t get the joke and are fooled by what they read in The Onion.  But that doesn’t make it adaptive disinformation.  It is just an accident that such gullible people are misled by The Onion.

Humans can give a false impression of themselves in the same sort of way.  Here’s an example:  At a recent conference on deception, we met a woman who had grey hair.  She told us that she had dyed her hair brown a while back.  Unlike the stick insect, this woman intentionally changed her appearance.  But just like the stick insect, she did not *intend* to mislead anyone about her age.  The woman just dyed hair because she wanted a change.  Nevertheless, she was surprised to discover that many people were misled about her age and that they started paying more attention to her.  And since she enjoyed the extra attention, this woman continued to dye her hair brown, and more people were misled.  Thus, just like with the stick insect, there was a reinforcement mechanism that led to people being misled even though no one intended that this happen.

Note: Professor Fallis has recorded a video that discusses other examples of humans producing adaptive disinformation.

In a similar vein, even if purveyors of fake news don’t intend to mislead anybody, it is no accident that people are misled by their stories.  People being misled serves a function.  Because the purveyors of fake news want to make money, they want people to click on their stories, and to share their stories with other people who might also click on them.  And people are more likely to click and to share crazy stories about Trump and Clinton if they believe those stories.  In other words, the more people that believe, the more money that is made.  Moreover, the more money that is made, the more people that get into the business of producing fake news.  Thus, even though purveyors of fake news may not care whether their stories are true or false or whether people believe them, there is a reinforcement mechanism that leads to people being misled by fake news.

Note:  Unlike the stick insect, the purveyors of fake news intentionally created their stories.  It is just that they do not necessarily intend to mislead anyone by doing so.

Now, some purveyors of fake news may be sophisticated enough to realize that people are more likely to click and to share their stories if they believe those stories.  Such purveyors do intend that people believe their stories.  In other words, they intend people to have false beliefs.  Thus, while the reinforcement mechanism is still in play, such purveyors are producing intentional (i.e., dictionary definition) disinformation.

However, purveyors of fake news in general are not, and need not, be aware that people are more likely to click and to share their stories if they believe those stories.  They may just find through trial-and-error that they can achieve their goal of generating traffic by writing certain sorts of outrageous stories.  “The best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters … some in Veles experimented with left-leaning or pro–Bernie Sanders content, but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content.”  Purveyors of fake news need not understand fully why certain sorts of stories are so effective at generating traffic.  Thus, they need not intend people to believe their stories.  So, while they are producing disinformation, it is adaptive rather than intentional.

Note: Some purveyors of fake news actually wanted Clinton rather than Trump to win the election.  So, they did not really want people to believe their outrageous stories about Clinton’s alleged misdeeds.

Admittedly, having people believe their crazy stories serves their interests just like it serves the interests of those purveyors who, for instance, do care about the outcome of elections.  But even though people believing their stories furthers their goal of generating traffic, it is not part of what they actually intend.  As lawyers would put it, there is no mens rea (or “guilty mind”).

Note:  Purveyors of fake news do have a “guilty mind” insofar as they intend people to believe that their websites are legitimate.  But they do not necessarily intend people to believe what those websites say.

Now, in the cases of adaptive disinformation that Professor Fallis (2015) discusses, the falsity of the belief is an essential part of the reinforcement mechanism.  For instance, stick insects look like sticks because this appearance falsely suggests to predators that they are just sticks.  But it is not clear that falsity plays the same role in the spread of fake news.  Unlike with the stick insect’s appearance, the fact that these stories are false is not part of what increases the spread of these stories.  These stories spread because they are so interesting, so surprising, and fit so well the preconceptions of a certain segment of the population.  Indeed, the purveyors of fake news would still disseminate the same crazy story about Trump or Clinton even if they found out that it was true.

But it is important to note that most of these outrageous stories are false.  There are not enough crazy stories about Trump and Clinton that are true to keep the purveyors of fake news in business.  Thus, the properties of these stories that do increase their spread are highly correlated with these stories being false.  So, it is still no accident that people are misled by fake news.

Note: While there may be a few crazy stories about Trump and Clinton that are true and that would generate traffic, it is not cheap to hire journalists to uncover these stories.  So, it is not really cost-effective for the purveyors of fake news to peddle truth to their readers.

References:

• Fallis, Don (2015). “What is Disinformation?” Library Trends, 63(3), 401-426.

Discussion Questions:

• Is there any fake news that is not at least adaptive disinformation?
• Is adaptive disinformation any less dangerous than intentional disinformation?

Fake News may not always be Disinformation …

By Kay Mathiesen and Don Fallis

Prototypical instances of disinformation include deceptive advertising, government propaganda, doctored photographs, forged documents, and fake maps (see Fallis 2015). Our favorite (fictional) example comes from a Penny Arcade comic strip. Skeletor is seen changing the He-Man entry in Wikipedia, which originally read “He-man is the most powerful man in the universe,” to read “He-Man is actually a tremendous jackass and not all that powerful.”

At the end of our last blog post, we asked whether fake news counts as disinformation. Harvard researchers have recently claimed that fake news is disinformation. But we probably don’t want to just take their word for it.

In order to evaluate their claim, we first need to define our terms. We have already given a definition of fake news. But what is disinformation?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, disinformation is “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.”

Most dictionary definitions are very similar. Moreover, several philosophers and information scientists (e.g., Hernon 1995, 134, Fetzer 2004, 231, Floridi 2011, 260) also claim that disinformation only occurs when false information is disseminated with the intention that people believe it.

Now, as we noted in the previous blog post, some fake news has been intentionally created in order to sway votes toward a particular candidate. For instance, the “Pope Endorses Trump” story was created by someone (Ovidiu Drobota) who wanted Trump to win. Such purveyors of fake news do intend to people to believe the false claims that they make. Thus, this sort of fake news pretty clearly counts as disinformation according to the dictionary definition.

However, most purveyors of fake news are just in it for the money. “The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don’t care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives.” They want people to click on their stories, and to share their stories with other people who might also click on them, which generates advertising revenue. They don’t care whether people actually believe their stories. So, the fake news created by such purveyors does not count as disinformation according to the dictionary definition.

Now, there is a sense in which all purveyors of fake news are being deceptive. While their websites are not legitimate news sources (e.g., with editors and fact checkers), the purveyors of fake news try to make their websites look legitimate. “Some masquerade as well-known outlets like The New York Times or Fox News, while others operate under made-in-America-sounding names like USA Daily News 24.” But even so, the purveyors of fake news need not intend to mislead people into believing the content of their websites. Again, getting people to actually believe their stories is irrelevant to their purposes.

… but Fake News is Bullshit

Even though most fake news does not count as disinformation according to the dictionary definition, we want to argue that it counts as something that is almost as bad. Namely, it counts as bullshit.

In his bestselling book On Bullshit, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005, 33-34) says that it is a “lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit.” According to Frankfurt (2005, 30-31), someone bullshits when she asserts something “without any regard for how things really are … without conscientious attention to the relevant facts … without bothering to take into account at all the question of its accuracy.”

This is precisely what we see in the case of fake news. The purveyors of fake news are not concerned with whether their stories are true or false. Given that they make up the stories, they have a pretty good idea that their stories are false. But their stories could turn out to be true. For instance, maybe the Pope really had endorsed Trump and Ovidiu Drobota just hadn’t heard about it yet. Moreover, as long as people click on them and share them, the purveyors of fake news would still be perfectly happy if their stories did turn out to be true.

Frankfurt (2005, 54) also claims that bullshitters necessarily misrepresent what they are up to; they “represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth.” In other words, bullshitters always hide the fact that they are bullshitting. This is what purveyors of fake news are doing when they try to make their websites look legitimate.

Admittedly, a purveyor of fake news may not be the prototypical example of a bullshitter. Frankfurt (2005, 18) claims that a bullshitter is typically trying to “convey a certain impression of himself.” Politicians certainly fit this mold. They talk a lot of crap in order to convince us that they are the kind of people who share our values. But there are all sorts of reasons why people say things without caring whether or not it’s true. For instance, advertisers talk a lot of crap, not in order to bolster their image as the politician does, but just in order to sell products. And purveyors of fake news talk a lot of crap just in order to get people to click on their stories. Unlike politicians, they don’t really want to be noticed at all. Yet all of these people are bullshitters simply because they are not concerned with the truth of what they say.

So, fake news seems to be bullshit rather than disinformation. But even if it is not disinformation, bullshit is still pretty dangerous. The bullshitter may not intend to mislead anyone. Even so, since he says stuff without any concern for whether or not it is true, he certainly puts people at risk of being misled. This is why fake news is so (epistemically) dangerous.

Note: Sometimes bullshit does fit the dictionary definition of disinformation. Frankfurt (2005, 59-61) claims that lying and bullshitting are mutually exclusive categories. But as Professor Fallis (2015) points out, there is nothing inconsistent about intending to mislead someone while not being concerned with what the truth is. For instance, Ovidiu Drobota intended people to believe something that was false (that the Pope endorsed Trump), but he would still have wanted people to believe the very same thing if it had been true.

References:

• Fallis, Don. (2015). “Frankfurt Wasn’t Bullshitting!” Southwest Philosophical Studies, 37, 11-20.
• Fetzer, James H. (2004). “Disinformation: The use of false information.” Minds and Machines, 2(14), 231-240.
• Floridi, Luciano (2011). The Philosophy of Information. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Hernon, Peter (1995). “Disinformation and misinformation through the internet: Findings of an exploratory study.” Government Information Quarterly, 12(2), 133-139.

Discussion Questions:

• Is there any fake news that is not bullshit according to Frankfurt’s definition?
• Is bullshit as dangerous as other forms of disinformation?

The Real Story Behind Fake News

By Kay Mathiesen and Don Fallis

Some of you may have seen this headline:

It is a classic example of what people are calling “fake news.”

In the lecture, Professor Fallis said that accurate information is the linchpin of information quality. And, you can’t get much more inaccurate than “fake news.” Clearly, as the graph below illustrates, “fake news” is a growing concern. If we are going to try to combat the growth of fake news, we will need to know what is driving its spread.

There are many questions that we could ask about what causes fake news to spread:

• Why do so many people click on fake news stories?
• Why do so many people share fake news stories with friends?
• Why do so many people believe fake news stories?
• What about the current political environment is making us vulnerable to fake news?

In fact, any of you could choose to tackle these or other questions in your blog post. But, in this post we are going to focus on the following question: What leads so many people to create fake news stories in the first place?

Here are just a few of the numerous recent headlines about fake news:

• “Trump accuses NBC News of spreading fake news” (Politico)
• “What’s Driving Fake News Is an Increase in Political Tribalism” (Fortune Magazine)
• “UK media chiefs called in by minister for talks on fake news” (The Guardian)
• “Flagging Fake News and Bad Sources Won’t Work. Thank the Brain.” (Slate Magazine)

As the above headlines illustrate, people use the term “fake news” in a variety of ways. (In fact, it has already been suggested that the term has lost its meaning and we should stop using it altogether (see, “It’s not fake news, it’s web dung”).) So, let’s start by defining our terms.

An article in the New York Times defines “fake news” as “stories invented from whole cloth, designed to attract social shares and web traffic by flattering the prejudices of their intended audience.” This definition nicely distinguishes “fake news” from everyday inaccurate news stories.

Some fake news is intentionally created in order to sway votes toward a particular candidate. 24 year old Romanian Ovidiu Drobota, who is credited with creating and spreading the “Pope endorses Trump” story, claims that he created his fake news website specifically in order to help Trump win the election.

But, the real driver of fake news is not politics, but money. The majority of “fake news” is created purely in order to get people to click through to a website and view advertising. As fake news “impresario” Paul Horner (who says he “hates” Trump) told the Washington Post, “I make most of my money from AdSense — like, you wouldn’t believe how much money I make from it. Right now I make like $10,000 a month from AdSense.” The people who create Fake News do not care if anyone actually believes it, they just care that people click on it and share it with others. (This profit model is described here.) The producers of Fake News have found that extremely partisan and outrageous stories spread more quickly through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Teenagers in this small town in Macedonia produce massive amount of fake news. Says one 19 year-old University Student, “The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them,” he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he’s fiddling with. “Who cares if they are true or false?”

 

In the lecture, Professor Fallis cited Peter Hernon’s definitions of misinformation and disinformation. But fake news sites don’t seem to be producing either of these forms of inaccurate and misleading information. It doesn’t seem right to say that the content on these sites is “an honest mistake,” but neither does it seem true that it is a “deliberate attempt to deceive or mislead.” Purveyors of fake news aren’t attempting to mislead people about whether the Pope endorsed Donald Trump—they are just trying to produce a story that will get people to click and share.

Here are some questions for discussion:

• Do you think that Fake News is a kind of disinformation? If not, what is it? If it is a kind of disinformation, then do we need to revise Hernon’s definition of disinformation? Do you have any suggestions for a revised definition that would include the kind of fake News we discuss here?
• It turns out that most people do not remember Fake News stories after a relatively short time. Does that mean that they are not really a threat to our knowledge?
• In the lecture from this week, Professor Fallis suggested a number of ways we might try to deal with the spread of inaccurate information. Do you think any of those would be effective in combating Fake News? Are there other solutions that might work better for combatting this particular form of inaccurate information?