Watch Your Feeds — And Yourselves

Studies have shown that no political side has a monopoly on producing—or recognizing—fake news (Image)

This week, the New York Times published a deep analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. While the article found several concerning trends, the most chilling was that “fake accounts tied to intelligence services in China, Iran, and Russia had directed thousands of tweets at Mr. Trump.” Beyond this, Trump has used hashtags that originated on Twitter accounts run by conspiracy theorists who are convinced that pedophilic satanists run the deep state. Trump has also retweeted supportive tweets from accounts linked to Russian intelligence. The Times goes on and on explaining how Trump receives and shares inaccurate information through his twitter. In short, interests — foreign and domestic —a are deceiving and manipulating our president using social media; everyone is vulnerable. 

Similarly, over the last few weeks, the Warren campaign ran intentionally fake ads on Facebook. These ads claimed that Mark Zuckerberg had endorsed Trump for president. The ad quickly goes on to point out that Zuckerberg did not, in fact, endorse Trump. For just a moment though, before we read the rest of the ad, did we believe that Zuckerberg had endorsed Trump?

The right does not face down fake news alone. A BBC article found that in one particular week, snopes.com “debunked many more anti-Republican party stories than pro-Republican ones.” If you think you are above deception by social media news, reconsider. None of us are above deception by authorities we trust. 

People almost always assume truth. Noted scholar Timothy Levine explains this with his “Truth-Default Theory.” In many experiments using intentional deception of subjects, Levine finds that people naturally assume others to be telling the truth. This comes out in Trump’s Twitter usage, Warren’s Facebook ad, and Snopes’ finding. 

Over the next year, as the election cycle heats up, everyone’s social media feeds will become more political. People will certainly share content that is inaccurate, too subjective, or intentionally manipulative. Watch your social media feeds. There will be deceptions, and you will be naturally biased to believe them. If you do not intentionally separate truth from deception, and recognize your naturally biases, you will be easy to manipulate.