Tag Archives: social media

Decision-making before retweeting

This is far from a comprehensive survey, but I asked and 83 people responded.

     Survey results are anonymous, so please be honest: I usually retweet/share links:
     If I like the title.                      3.6%
     If I trust the source.             25.3%
     After skimming content.    16.9%
     After reading content.        54.2%
     83 votes Total

 

I think that the people in my network probably slant towards more cautious thought before sharing, compared to a more random selection in a larger survey. That said, I’m often surprised when I see someone retweet something I shared in a shorter timespan than it would take to read the article I linked to. My guess as to why? ‘I like the message of the title and I trust Dave to share something good.’

Think about these results, what if anything do they say about the reliability of information being shared on social media?

My 13th Twitterversary

Today marks 13 years since I sent my first Tweet. Twitter has influenced me enough that I even wrote a short (free) ebook to help people get started on it.

My use of Twitter has evolved considerably. It used to play a bigger role in my life because it was a gateway to learning about using technology and social media as a means to share ideas and seek out others doing the same. Now, I find that I transmit more than I engage, and when I engage it’s usually with people I’ve developed long term digital friendships with.

I also use it for news. I hate watching news, but going to the search page (tab) and seeing the trending hashtags is enough to keep me informed without being sucked into the drama and bias of a single news source on TV. This isn’t a comprehensive way to consume news, but these days I struggle to keep from being sucked into the most recent drama that streams constantly through news headlines, and a simple hashtag summary can succinctly let me know if I should dig deeper.

I have to say 13 years after starting that I romanticize and miss the ‘old Twitter’ days of people sharing links to blog posts they wrote and the marriage between Twitter and blogging that, while still there, is far less what Twitter is about. That said, my consumption of blogs as a primary place to engage online has diminished, while ironically I have become a prolific blogger, writing daily for the past 16 months. It’s easy to romanticize something that you simultaneously aren’t likely to want to return to. And so while I miss ‘old Twitter’ I must admit that as much as Twitter has changed, I have changed too.

Watching Twitter change, I do see some positives that I hope to see continue and here is one area that impresses me:

While other social media sites are permitting widespread sharing of fake and unproven information, Twitter is putting warnings like this on prominent and influential people who are spreading false claims.

And while I’m a huge supporter of free speech, and against censorship, I do believe that bad ideas can spread easily and we have an obligation to warn people when influential people are irresponsible enough to promote bad ideas. While the balance between freedom to share and obligation to inform is a delicate one, I commend Twitter for taking the risk in being a leader in this area.

As an aside, I think there is room for a new form of social media, one where people can have public conversations with only invited guests, and everyone watching can have a separate side conversation. These closed but public conversations can have a moderator who can pull in sidebar comments and/or commenters, and so observers can be invited in and involved, if moderators choose. Or, moderators can delete or even block rude, inappropriate trolls that are disruptive to the side conversation.

Wide open conversations seem to bring out the worst in people, especially anonymous people that hide behind anonymity and say nasty things they would never say if their identity were known. A social media site that was more conversational than a blog, that allowed a healthy debate to happen in public, could be something that really helped to create open dialogue in a way that can’t seem to happen on Facebook or Twitter… without the conversation degrading into a petty, angry pissing match where trolls undermine the conversation.

Until that new social media tool comes along, I’ll just keep plugging along on Twitter, playing with how I use it so that it’s useful to me.

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Happy 13th Twitter Anniversary to me:)

In Search of a Flat Earth - QAnon-Part 2

Understanding QAnon

Here is an excellent video that helps us understand the lure and draw of QAnon, and it is better than any other video that I’ve seen. I’ve set the second video below up to play starting at 37:50, or Part 2 of the video.

The video is wrongly titled ‘In Search of a Flat Earth‘. The flat earth conspiracy is really just a metaphor for the bigger point about how bad ideas spread. If you want to see fantastic proof that the earth is round, you just need to go to 5:46 of this video, and watch until 12:48.

The 7 minutes of Part 1 you need to see! 

This 7 minutes is all you need to debunk Flat Earthers, then you can go on to the better part of the video, shared below. From the 37:50 point of the video, the really interesting discussion about QAnon begins:

This 30 Minutes at the end of the video is actually about QAnon

I’ll let the last 1/2 hour of this video speak for itself, other than to say that QAnon is not some little cult of no concern, it is a distributed, disruptive network of people spreading bad and dangerous ideas.

Published and imperfect

My buddy Kelly puts out daily Professional Development (PD) inspirational quotes on Twitter, and I get tagged in one of the shares he does each morning. I love getting these: #MyPDToday

I saw a typo in one of his shares today, and knowing that he shares the tweet more than once a day, I sent a Direct Message to him letting him know. His response: “Thanks. Sometimes those things slip by my editor!! 🤣“

No pretence, just appreciation. I’d want to know if the situation was reversed. Sometimes we don’t get this opportunity on Twitter. We tweet something with a typo and before we know it, it has a dozen retweets and a handful of comments… then we see the typo! This can feel a little embarrassing. But it’s going to happen.

This weekend I was re-reading a Daily Ink that I’d written over a month ago. While reading it again I found two (careless) errors. I changed them, but was still rolling my eyes at myself for missing them in the first place. It’s going to happen.

The reason it’s going to happen is because Kelly and I are putting content ‘out there’. We are sharing our thoughts and ideas on social media platforms. We are publishing things without publishers and editors. We try to be careful, but we make mistakes. We aren’t publishing books with typos, that have gone through a rigorous processes to prevent those typos from happening. We are re-reading sentences that our brains developed and understand, without seeing every word. We are imperfect editors of our own work.

Then we hit the ‘publish’ or the ‘Tweet’ button.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

There might be some self-professed grammar and spelling police that roll their eyes at what we are doing. For example I completely ignore the idea of writing in full paragraphs here. I’ll routinely have paragraphs with just one, two, or three sentences, and I’m sure that drives some people crazy. That’s how I structure ideas, and if it doesn’t work for someone, they don’t need to read my blog.

Publish your work. It won’t be for everybody. It won’t be perfect. It is still worth sharing.

At the speed of lies

Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time. They have, for years, been spread in small circles, where they fester and rise to prominence every now and then. The first time that I really saw social media have an influence on a conspiracy theory was around the 9/11 tragedy. YouTube videos started to emerge spreading the idea that it was a planned event by US insurgents or a cabal of some sorts, and not just a foreign terrorist attack. I saw videos getting millions of views based on fictional theories and the cherry-picking facts to focus on.

Now, Facebook groups form and millions of people join them. That’s worse than a video, because Facebook groups are not just about watching a single video, but about creating a continual stream of propaganda that feeds the beliefs of a growing community. As seen in this NPR article:

Social media groups have quickly sprung up in the days since voting stopped, to spread disinformation about supposed cheating on the part of election officials, and in some cases organize in-person protests.

“This is the most intense online disinformation event in U.S. history and the pace of what we have found has only accelerated since [Election Day],” said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Facebook’s former chief security officer.

Meanwhile, as I write this, Twitter has put this notice:

On 9 of the last 10 tweets of the sitting President. This notification links to the following statement:

It’s good to see that social media companies are stepping in to try to combat the spread of dangerous propaganda/fake news/lies. Counter to this is the argument of, ‘Who gets to decide what is true and what is not? Is this itself a form of censorship?’

I think there are definitive lines that can be drawn and social media sites do need to act. For example, when an idiot like Alex Jones decides to call a school shooting fake and declare that parents of dead children are actors, he deserves to be silenced on social media. The line is simple: fake and false claims (especially by people of influence) should be immediately flagged, or removed. Immediately.

One of the challenges of dealing with fake news and miss-information is that arguments against it are a win for the propaganda spreaders. The moment a credible person argues the point(s) they either legitimize the value of the opposing points as something worth arguing, or they feed into the conspiracy that they are hiding the truth, or they are widening the platform by bringing attention to it. It’s a losing scenario even if the argument of the credible person is factually sound.

When lies can spread so easily, when they can build momentum, and develop communities around them, they become very dangerous. Especially when the slick videos and arguments are well designed to ‘sell’ ideas, using the same convincing strategies that advertisers have honed for years, to sell products… but these strategies are being used to sell ideas that polarize opinions, anger and enrage, and ultimately brainwash people.

We are living in an era when social media is being used to undermine social cohesion. Lies travel fast and build momentum. Truth won’t slow this down without putting a few walls in the way. We can debate about what those walls look like, but we can’t wait until those walls are perfect before we start putting them up. Kudos to Twitter for doing what they are doing!

Common Sense and Speculation

I was planning a long post to look at Covid-19 numbers and the pandemic. With global numbers around 1/2 a million new cases a day and 18-20% of those in the US, it is fairly obvious that the 2nd wave is clearly upon us. Some would argue that the second wave is worse than the first wave. I don’t think so, but I do think we are at a dangerous point where it could get worse.

I started taking screen shots and saving links to research, but I really don’t have it in me this Sunday afternoon to be writing a formal essay on Covid-19. If you want some supporting resources, here is a LinkTree to some great research from an epidemiologist.

The following is what has me concerned right now about the pandemic:

1. Of course the numbers now are worse than wave 1. During wave 1 people couldn’t get tested, there weren’t enough tests out there. A relative in California had covid in March and was sent home without a test. She isn’t a March/wave 1 statistic, as many hundreds of thousands were not, simply from a lack of testing. However, that doesn’t mean that the numbers now are good, and without effort to slow the spread, they will get worse.

2. Some people are easily fooled and manipulated. The idea that masks are either something political or something that infringes on personal rights is asinine. That people mix up being a good citizen with being a rule-following sheep is insulting to the human race. We have survived as tribes, and communities, and as a species because we are communal and support each other in times of need. We are in a time of need to cooperate and support each other.

3. There is only one way to achieve herd immunity that is morally acceptable and that is with a vaccine. Any other approach is a disregard for human life and for the most vulnerable people in our society.

4. We will need a large percentage of the population to get vaccinated. This won’t happen initially. I’m completely pro-vaccine. I’m booked for a flu shot. I will get a Covid-19 vaccine… but I’m not racing to get one that has been rushed to market without being properly tested.

5. Speculations: These are assumptions I’m making, unlike the things above that are based on facts, research and common sense, these are things that I believe will happen in the future. (Hopefully still based on common sense, but I could be wrong!)

A) We will have a safe vaccine in 6 months to a year. What that means is that we will be heading into 2022 before we have a grasp of how well we will come out from the shadow of this virus.

B) We will start to see some normalcy to our world in the middle of 2021 because rapid testing will be affordable and widespread. So things like travel can happen with 1-3 day quarantines rather than 14 days. Entire offices or schools could get tested and contact tracing will help reduce the spread. So, despite the vaccine taking more time to arrive, with proper efforts to protect ourselves and to be willingly tested, things will get better before widespread vaccine adoption.

C) Anti-vaccination and anti-mask groups will stop getting the over-glorified attention they don’t deserve, and they will diminish in size. I’m most likely to be wrong with this speculation if the current US president is re-elected, and his downplaying Covid-19 propaganda is permitted to continue.

D) Despite my optimism that anti-vaccine and anti-mask groups popularity will wane, I think we will struggle with: Conspiracy theories being confused for news; Fake news being so common and well presented that it will become harder to distinguish from real news; And, social media will continue to promote the spread of bad ideas for quite some time. We are going to witness an epic battle between Truth, fake news, censorship, and sensationalization that will leave everyone wondering where they can look to find any information that doesn’t need fact checking?

So, take a deep breath, and buckle up for another year of uncertainty. We need to recognize that nothing is going back to 2019’s version of normal for some time. That said, we need to support each other, do our part, keep our BS filters on high alert, and make smart choices as we head into the holiday season and the new year.

A Life Consumed

Overstimulated, over stressed,
Anxiety heightened but not addressed.

Faces lit in a constant glow,
From a device, in hands, below.

Palms cup, thumbs type,
Or click, or ‘Like’, or swipe.

Acceptance measured by affirmation,
But never enough for self-appreciation.

Pressure builds to levels previously unknown,
From always being connected, yet always feeling alone.

A-Life-Consumed-2020-10-30-Poem-David-Truss

Manipulation and Engagement

Spend an hour and a half watching Social Dilemma on Netflix.

The section on fake news about an hour into the show is truly alarming. Fake news travels 6 times faster and further on Twitter than real news. Think about that as a battle against or for Truth. It’s an unfair fight.

Polarization is growing because polarized messages feed the attention algorithms better than centrist views and ideas.

Your social media feed isn’t designed to give you what others get, it’s catered to keep your attention. Your attention is the product. Social media sites vie for that attention and then sell it to the highest bidder… and the highest bidders are not just shoe companies and consumables, the highest bidders are wanting to influence the next video you see, and the next idea that moves your thinking where they want.

If you use social media, you are not in control of your own attention.

Anti-social media

I was in a Twitter conversation recently that went a bit sideways. I don’t want to get into details, but I want to talk about a landscape of social sharing that is exhausting me. Is it just me or does every challenging conversation seem to go somewhere it doesn’t have to?

Pick any prominent public figure, if they say anything germane to a serious topic, the comment responses are caustic and angry. It’s like people are trolling just to attack. That’s not what happened in the conversation I was having, but that’s where my mind went.

What happened to me was that I went silent. I had more to share, but saw no use in saying more. The conversation between two others went to a place where I could add no value. It was upsetting. I am not someone who likes to walk away from something unresolved, but I didn’t have the words. I typed a response, then deleted it. I did this again.

I can’t stay on Twitter and only share things I think will acquire likes and positive comments. I’m not a poop disturber either, but I want to be able to go to hard places sometimes, to question and to learn. But I’m not feeling like good discourse can happen on social media anymore. Discourse has become argument and different views are not tolerated.

What I’m talking about goes far beyond the conversation I had, but what I’ve seen recently has pushed me away from following conversation threads on Twitter… Not because I’m not interested in the topic, but because I’m not interested in the polar, angry, and even nasty comments that fill any (even slightly) controversial thread.

Social media seems a lot less social these days.

NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

It’s sad that fake news is spread so easily that this even has to exist! The Associated Press has started this report: “NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week“, to debunk fake and even harmful, made-up news reports that have gone viral on social media.

Here is an example:

“CLAIM: The new vaccine for COVID-19 will be the first of its kind ever. It will be an “MRna vaccine” which will literally alter your DNA. It will wrap itself into your system. You will essentially become a genetically modified human being.

THE FACTS: Experts say mRNA vaccines do not alter your DNA. As researchers work to test vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19, social media posts are sharing misinformation to sow doubt even before they become available to the public. The posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram suggest that a new coronavirus mRNA vaccine will genetically modify humans…” — Beatrice Dupuy

This fake story feeds perfectly into the narrative of anti-vaxers and conspiracy theorists that believe Covid-19 is not serious and/or part of a plot to control the masses. It will be shared and re-shared, being passed off as facts and evidence on discussion boards, in Facebook groups and on Facebook timelines. It will be shared with hashtags on Twitter that will point this fake news to the right audience, who will believe it.

How did we get here? The sad thing is, the people that most need to see this Associated Press report are the people who would say that what’s written in this report is fake. They won’t do the research. They won’t check any sources. They won’t change their minds. They will spread the fake news and keep it alive long enough to fool more gullible people into believing what they want to believe, despite factual data and evidence to the contrary.

Worse yet, we are heading into the world of deep fakes, where video ‘evidence’ can be fabricated so well that it is indistinguishable from reality. Make no mistake, we need news websites like this to help us recognize viral fake news. We also need everyone to think twice before sharing controversial and click-bait like articles, unless we’ve done the work to ensure we aren’t perpetuating fake news.

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Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck