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Sunday, March 09, 2025
Nigerian princes, flat-earthers, and media literacy
The world's first email was sent in 1971. The second email came from a Nigerian prince, needing help with a transfer of funds. For as long as we can think, the internet has been a haven for scammers, liars, con artists, and conspiracy theorists. While in 1970 the famous Blue Marble photograph of earth from space had convinced pretty much the last doubters that earth was in fact a sphere, the internet has helped the flat-earth theory to new heights. Of course today you could probably rather easily produce a photograph of a flat earth seen from space with the help of AI, although given the source material you might have to specify that you don't want a giant turtle and four elephants carrying the disc in the picture.
In the 15th century some scholars argued against the printing press leading to a degradation of knowledge. It is easy to see their point, after observing the internet as a logical conclusion to the development of letting everybody publish whatever they want. And there are signs that the advent of large language model AI isn't going to help, as AI can not only hallucinate, but also unearth that one Reddit post about eating rocks, rather than giving the consensus view that eating rock is bad for your stomach. Fact-checking on social media is in decline, mostly for cost reasons, but in part also because there were at least some examples of "fact-checking" being used as a method of censorship against opinions that were more clearly unpopular than false.
The reasonable and educated, and thus all of my readers, deal with misinformation in media and on the internet with media literacy skill. We learned to detect biases, and to identify sources that are more likely than others to tell the truth. We know that just because "it is written on the internet", it doesn't mean it is true. And that "do your own research" is basically telling people that because they can find any weird theories by doing a search on Google, those theories must be right. There simply isn't any available internet tool where you could search for something like "was the coronavirus produced in a laboratory?" and you'd get a percentage number of the probability of that theory being true or false, or some other sort of indicator of how far out or not that idea is.
But given that misinformation on the internet is now many decades old, I find it surprising how few people seem to have this sort of media literacy skills. Shouldn't this be something taught in primary school, right after being taught how to read? We might need a bit more time to all realize that photos aren't proof of anything anymore, but shouldn't we all know by now not to trust the written word on the internet? Why would anybody believe something he read on the internet anymore than he would believe something he heard some bloke say in the pub?
- posted by Tobold @ 12:11 PM Permanent Link
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Terry Pratchett at least knew it was fiction.
LLM synopsis of google results is just as bad, google throws up this nice quote but if you go though all the search results you never find anything that actually matches that quote.
I am not sure anyone can be 100% correct on that sort of media literacy. Jerry Pournelle used to be as close as anyone. But that level of knowledge about almost everything is pretty rare.
I was trying to identify the true/false on the statement that Climate Change causes Pollution last week, I believe their theory was climate change causes people to react to climate change by using devices that cause pollution.
LLM synopsis of google results is just as bad, google throws up this nice quote but if you go though all the search results you never find anything that actually matches that quote.
I am not sure anyone can be 100% correct on that sort of media literacy. Jerry Pournelle used to be as close as anyone. But that level of knowledge about almost everything is pretty rare.
I was trying to identify the true/false on the statement that Climate Change causes Pollution last week, I believe their theory was climate change causes people to react to climate change by using devices that cause pollution.
Last weekend I watched the movie No Country for Old Men for the first time. When I finished it I googled to see if a sequel was ever in the works. The Google AI chat bot that they stick at the top of Google searches told me yes that a sequel was being developed and would be released in 2025.
The first results below this were links to several different youtube channels with the sequels trailer also saying it would release in 2025. Below that were multiple websites with entire articles talking about the upcoming sequel and even going into supposed plot points and returning actors. The websites even linked or had embeds of various sequel teasers and trailers.
All the above was AI generated garbage as there is no sequel being worked on to that movie. And yet Google gathered up all these different fake AI trailers from multiple channels and websites and presented them to me as its top results and it's own LLM plug-in told me it was real and happening.
Reddit is the social media platform I use the most and every single day I see Disinformation upvoted to the top of the site despite many redditors thinking they are smarter or more internet savvy than Facebook or Twitter users.
I fear we truly live in a post truth world.
The first results below this were links to several different youtube channels with the sequels trailer also saying it would release in 2025. Below that were multiple websites with entire articles talking about the upcoming sequel and even going into supposed plot points and returning actors. The websites even linked or had embeds of various sequel teasers and trailers.
All the above was AI generated garbage as there is no sequel being worked on to that movie. And yet Google gathered up all these different fake AI trailers from multiple channels and websites and presented them to me as its top results and it's own LLM plug-in told me it was real and happening.
Reddit is the social media platform I use the most and every single day I see Disinformation upvoted to the top of the site despite many redditors thinking they are smarter or more internet savvy than Facebook or Twitter users.
I fear we truly live in a post truth world.
Tobold: "[...] how few people seem to have this sort of media literacy skills. Shouldn't this be something taught in primary school, right after being taught how to read? [...] shouldn't we all know by now not to trust the written word on the internet? Why would anybody believe something he read on the internet anymore than he would believe something he heard some bloke say in the pub?"
Here is the kicker: do you think this sort of literacy is wanted?
Sure, every side proclaims how more literacy is needed to see through the the thinly veiled lies of the other side while they wonder how so many people fall for the "obvious".
But there is no standalone "Internet literacy" or "right wing dog whistle literacy" where you can see through some flat earth post or how all migrants need to be deported but then fall for "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" when the government says it.
You have seen the comments on your 50% fascist post the other day and for lot of them I think the people didn't mentally flip to the other side and question why those things "under attack" have come to be in the first place.
Literacy is a double edged sword as it requires scepticism and critical thinking (not to mention that it's hard and requires time to sift through and reflect on the information). People in power (regardless of politics or not) do not want you to view them as some bloke in the pub.
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Here is the kicker: do you think this sort of literacy is wanted?
Sure, every side proclaims how more literacy is needed to see through the the thinly veiled lies of the other side while they wonder how so many people fall for the "obvious".
But there is no standalone "Internet literacy" or "right wing dog whistle literacy" where you can see through some flat earth post or how all migrants need to be deported but then fall for "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" when the government says it.
You have seen the comments on your 50% fascist post the other day and for lot of them I think the people didn't mentally flip to the other side and question why those things "under attack" have come to be in the first place.
Literacy is a double edged sword as it requires scepticism and critical thinking (not to mention that it's hard and requires time to sift through and reflect on the information). People in power (regardless of politics or not) do not want you to view them as some bloke in the pub.
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