Misinformation

Annoyed by a response to one of your tweets? Twitter is rolling out a feature that enables users to hide replies. Twitter's Suzanne Xie says that during testing, users usually hid replies because they found them "irrelevant, off-topic or annoying" and also explained that the platform is exploring further ways to give users more control over conversations.

Twitter will stop accepting political advertising globally, a policy that applies to messages related to a specific campaign and those that address a political issue, CEO Jack Dorsey says. The company will unveil details Nov. 15, and the ban will take effect Nov. 22. This is in contrast to Facebook’s decision to not fact-check claims made by politicians in ads placed on the platform.

Twitter has had some policies in place to keep politicians from making false statements on its platform, but has yet to use them. Earlier this summer, Twitter said that it would gray out tweets from public figures, including Trump, that violated its rules and even restrict users’ abilities to share them, but hasn’t implemented it on any tweets so far.

It has recently come out that Facebook is exempting political ads from its fact checking processes and rules, with a statement from CEO Mark Zuckerberg noting, "We don’t fact-check political ads. We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying. And if content is newsworthy, we also won’t take it down even if it would otherwise conflict with many of our standards."

His stance on stepping away from holding that power overlooks the fact that Facebook already has that kind of power for other ads, raising the question of why in regular ads, Facebook can be okay with using outside fact-checkers, and banning false claims outright, yet in political ads it can't do the same. It is an interesting topic to discuss with your children relating to misinformation online. Also keep in mind you can edit your Facebook Ad Preferences, and remove anything that you don't agree with or doesn't look right. You can also check out Facebook’s Ad Library, which now includes a new tracker of Facebook ad spending by major political candidates. It is a bit of an eye opener. Interesting enough, on the flip side, Twitter has banned all political ads.

It is too easy today for people to search for answers online, says Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University Stern School of Business, who calls this trend the "Google Search Curse". Damodaran says that because we can look up answers to probelms immediately, we’re losing the agility – not just the ability - to look at a problem and solve it. He teaches his students to avoid this -- and how to be "intellectually nimble" -- by training them how to think for themselves, not just accept other people’s solutions to issues, and think through problems.

He says that obviously fact-based questions are different. You can say, “Hey, go look up on Google search what the tallest mountain in the world is.” Reasoning your way into a factual answer is not going to give you a better answer. But if your question is more analytical, he feels there is an advantage to taking a 30-minute break before you open up Google search and look for an answer.

Automated bots are taking over social media, says Arkose Labs, adding that more than half the logins and a quarter of new social media account applications are fraudulent. These fake accounts have implications for those fighting against cyberbullying and misinformation. The company reviewed 1.2 billion third-quarter transactions across platforms, including gaming and e-commerce, and determined that about 75% of fraud on social media was committed by bots.

More than half of teenagers 13 to 17 say they receive news on YouTube and other social media sites, according to a poll from SurveyMonkey and Common Sense Media. Much of that information comes from social media influencers and celebrities, although less than half of teen respondents said social media and influencers "generally (get) the facts straight."

The Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Act, introduced recently in the Senate, would allocate funds for teaching Americans how to identify fake information on social media, especially that coming from foreign actors trying to disrupt elections. The bill, according to The Hill, would also create a grant program for media literacy efforts in grades K-12.

Have you been meaning to talk to your kids about misinformation, but don’t know exactly where to start? In an article on MiddleWeb (intended for middle school teachers), educational consultant Frank Baker shares several examples of so-called fake news, strategies to identify and understand it, and media literacy tips for dissecting advertisements. These are a great place to start to help your kids think more critically about media messages and the entities that create them.

According to an article in Forbes, MindEdge Learning's State of Critical Thinking study found that while most Americans believe critical thinking is essential in assessing the truthfulness of online information, very few – including college educated Americans - can identify suspicious material when they encounter it on the web. Identifying misinformation includes paying attention to such details as spelling or grammatical errors, the presence or absence of photo credits, indications that the content is being promoted or contains suspicious web addresses, and other obvious indicators.

The study, now in its third year, recorded a decrease of 17 percentage points since 2017 in the proportion of respondents who achieved an "A" grade on the organization's digital literacy test. Three quarters of millennial respondents received an "F" grade, failing to get more than five questions right. Interestingly, older respondents (60 and older) scored better than Millennials, who are generally considered more web-savvy.

Social media is skewing the way children view life, according to Damian Hinds, United Kingdom Secretary of State for Education, in an article in the Metro (UK). Hinds makes this statement following the Mental Health Foundation’s finding that 40 percent of teenagers reported being worried about their body image due to comments by friends. He is calling on influencers and others to help support body positivity, in part by being more transparent about how photos they post online are edited.