With the 2020 election coming up, we can expect plenty of disinformation in our news feeds. Disinformation originates in many places – Russia and homegrown United States. It filters up into what we would like to think of as reliable news sources. Those sources, because of their desire to believe that “both sides” have equal claim to truth, can be manipulated.
I’ll continue to post about recognizing that disinformation, because it’s up to all of us to make sure that what we’re sharing is truthful.
The New York Times has a big article from Josh Owens, who worked for Infowars and now says he regrets it. Another article, on Britain’s struggle with Russia over the poisoning, on British soil, of two people with a nerve agent by Russians, contains information about how the Russians use disinformation.
The Times article depicts Alex Jones as violent and demanding that his employees generate outrageously fear-producing stories. Nothing that Infowars touches should be considered reliable. Respectable news organizations should trace stories to their origins and reject anything that has been pushed by Infowars unless it has completely independent backing.
One of the stories Infowars pushed was that Fukushima radiation was showing up on the west coast of the United States. The responsible media dealt reasonably well with that, although it took some time. Here’s what the Washington Post reported in 2014. But I also saw (and debunked) a lot of sharing on social media of maps that weren’t of radiation levels and the dramatic video of radiation measurements on a California beach.
Russian and Republican disinformation flood the zone with alternative stories, designed to turn people off by making it too difficult to figure out what’s right so that people give up. “They’re all liars.” or “Nobody can really know.”
After the Skripals were poisoned and the British government began putting out information to its citizens, the Russian government jumped in, attacking the British information for apparent contradictions and offering up multiple explanations of the incident. The point was to make people doubt their own government. The Atlantic article lays this out in full detail for the Skripal incident.
What can you do?
First, stop thinking “They’re all liars.” or “Nobody can really know.” I know it’s cool to be cynical, but in doing that, you’re giving up your ability to think critically and make good choices and probably helping to muddy the waters for others.
Second, know who supplied the material you’re sharing on social media. Most of us don’t have time or aren’t set up to trace material back to its Russian or Infowars roots. So if you don’t know that the material came from a reliable source, don’t share it. Just don’t.
Third, if you’re concerned about something you’ve seen, check with an expert. Snopes fact-checks many of the memes you may see. Washington Post has a fact-check column. FactCheck.org is another good resource. You can ask me about science-related stuff. You can ask David Anderson about health insurance. We’re both available through “Contact Us.”
There is such a thing as fact. You can find it. Or at least avoid spreading disinformation.
Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner
oldster
What can you do?
First step, turn off Facebook.
Second step, persuade all of your relatives to turn off Facebook.
Third step, nuke Facebook from orbit.
Baud
Another piece advice for us in particular. Negative stories about Dems should be trippled checked, and confirmed against the original video where possible. This applies not just to disinformation but mainstream media slant, especially when they try to use a quote plucked out of context.
LivingInExile
Politifact.com is another decent factchecker.
feebog
Thank you Cheryl. I’m not sure dropping off of Facebook or any other social media site is the right thing to do. More constructive I think to push back with facts and civil argument. I do it all the time. I don’t expect to change a lot of minds, but may reach a few.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well at this point, why is anyone taking InforWars seriously? The mere fact that that someone would admit to even reading something from InforWars is grounds for ridicule. Alex Jones Poe law’ed himself out of the game like Glen Beck did before him, the question is who will be the wingnut of the season for 2020?
David Anderson
Hit me up for health insurance bullshit checking duties please.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: That is good advice, not just to avoid foreign disinformation and hack media spin but also misleading bullshit from social media randos who think the best way to promote their candidate is to tear down another.
Wag
Absolutely right. Trust no memes unless you know the background story
NotMax
Barrels of chaff, thimblefuls of wheat.
MisterForkbeard
@LivingInExile: Politifact is okay. They suffer from the same “We have to pick some bad Democratic statements and blow them out of proportion so we look non-partisan” trap that a lot of fact checkers fall into.
Still, they’re much better than most news sites.
oatler.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-irs-considers-anti-semite-rick-wiles-trunews-network-a-church/
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Sometimes I listen to the 10pm news on the local Fox station (owned by Sinclair, so a double whammy). Their B.S. is just as infuriating as anything Jones or Beck could spew.
Jay
There are also a lot of Social Media researchers mapping, debunking and tracing the roots of disinfo and black propaganda now in real time, along with Citizen and Online Media groups to pay attention to for the latest and greatest ratfucking, that will show in your QAnon Cousin or RageBook Uncles feeds in the next few days.
the Intel communities got cock blocked by the Politicians and Bureaucracies in warning us, so a bunch of Citizen Journalists have stepped forward, front and center.
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: Verify, then trust. That works for me.
Patricia Kayden
Roger Moore
I think this is the single most important step. People talk about creating black lists of bad media sources like Fox, Sinclair, InfoWars, etc. But doing that is just playing whack-a-mole. The people who want to distributed disinformation can create a web site that simulates a credible news source far more easily than we can figure out that it’s spreading lies. It makes a lot more sense to focus on creating a white list of credible news sources and rely on those sources. If you see something from an unknown source, treat it as possible disinformation until/unless you can confirm it with a source you can trust.
One of the real dangers of social media is that it’s designed to make it easy, even reflexive to share what you see. We share stuff because it’s hits our emotions hard enough to bypass our BS filters. The people spreading disinformation have been learning how to trigger those emotions so their lies spread, while actual news isn’t tailored to do the same thing.
LivingInExile
@MisterForkbeard: I agree with you, they’re not perfect, but…..
Ramalama
Dan Froomkin, a journalist formerly from the WashPost, has a new project out that monitors media coverage. He’s watching the watchers … and is calling the media out. Presswatchers. He’s linked with Salon.com but he also has an outright website too.
Toss him a couple of bucks. He’s been going hard and righteous.
Mike in NC
We’ve deleted our FaceBook accounts and pay no attention to other social media platforms.
trollhattan
Fröhliche Krampusnacht, y’all.
Have some Schnapps.
Capri
I used to respectfully comment when I saw something dead wrong – but any interaction drives up the algorythms. So I stopped reading Facebook.
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
This is mostly a problem if you read only their judgment. The good thing about them- and similar MSM fact checkers- is that they go into some detail about why they made the judgment they did. If you’re willing to read the details, you can make up your own mind about how honest or dishonest the person was being.
Jay
@Capri:
ditto for twitter, youtube, instagram, pinterest, etc.
Caroline Orr(@rvawonk) and others have written about methods to highlight the disinfo and expose it, with out giving it traffic to promote it.
bbleh
It’s not “cool to be cynical.” It’s lazy.
Jay
Some places are waking up,….
Mike G
Russia did the same thing when Russian-backed rebels shot down Malaysia Airlines 17 over eastern Ukraine. A flood of articles about how Ukrainian government forces did it, some of them gullibly or lucratively published on US websites.
Jay
trollhattan
@Jay:
Campus PC leaking northward as snowflakes fly. Alert the flying monkey brigades; hopefully they’ll run afoul of the Mounties at the border as they head there to defend freedom and stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@David Anderson: Is it true that if I wave a chicken around my head clockwise 9 times while chanting Kabbalistic formulations I can both ward off the evil eye and ensure good health and long life? Asking for a friend…
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Only in Nevada.
David C
So my areas of scientific expertise are radiation biology, toxicology, and immunology (particularly vaccines) – all from a PhD in opportunism. :-) Debunking is like a full-time job.
Jay
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/amp/
Major Major Major Major
Good stuff. I remember all that Fukushima crap; I was working and living in Marin County at the time and was probably at ground zero for bullshit nuclear fearmongering. Honestly it kind of opened my eyes to how viral BS/propaganda was going to work going forward.
This is actually a very good first-level assumption for Republican statements of course.
Tangentially, I’ve spun up an instance of the newest OpenAI text generator and am working on a post about AI-driven online content. The AI is fairly impressive, when it does its job. Definitely the sort of thing that could be used to do humanoid propaganda bots at scale.
For example, using this post as input (generated text after the bold, obviously):
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
It used to be just 3 times, not 9. Damn inflation. //
Jay
https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Disinformation-Bibliography.pdf
Cheryl Rofer
@Jay: The point of this article is a good one.
Don’t even share or like what looks like innocuous or uplifting material unless you know where it’s coming from. By sharing or liking, you are promoting the account, which may be set up to deliver disinformation later.
Jay
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/12/far-right-use-russian-style-propaganda-to-spread-misinformation
A lot of the IRA disinfo was “plumped” by Domestic and Foreign digital news sites to generate clicks for ad dollars.
Now a lot of the content is domestically produced, and distributed by more anonymous channels.
Baud
I trust none of you people, if that’s even what you are.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: Only if you then use the chicken to make chicken noodle soup.
randy khan
@oldster:
As a prescription for fighting misinformation, this is wrong (okay, except maybe for the third step). Failing to engage doesn’t help. While I’m not nearly as confident as I was years ago about the marketplace of ideas, I am confident that the bad ideas and lies are more likely to spread if people don’t confront them.
Gin & Tonic
My old man, who died many many years ago, had a golden rule: don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.
Jay
@trollhattan:
we don’t have free speech up here, which is a good thing.
We have “responsible speech” here, with liability lessons, which many here, from Universities to the Royal Canadian Legion, have had to relearn the hard way.
Gin & Tonic
@Mike G: Russians, not “Russian-backed rebels.” Only Russian regulars had the skills and training to operate the BUK system.
snoey
The local news is where to check outrage-du-jour accounts.
If someone forwards “news” that for instance the Bozeman High School is banning Christians check the Bozeman paper to find out that what really happened is that they have removed official status from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, though they still get to meet, etc.
Ask me about Massachusetts not keeping score in soccer.
randy khan
The “both sides stink” stuff is particularly pernicious, and worth rooting out wherever you see it. A lot of those people actually are natural allies of the Democrats, but they’ve seen so much misinformation and disinformation that they’ve decided they need to sit things out to avoid the taint of either party.
Jeffro
@Baud: But of course I am people, comrade!
Jeffro
Btw Cheryl, thanks for the article – I have already shared it to Facebook and Twitter.
After running it through Snopes, of course…
/rimshot
Marcopolo
@Capri: This! The problem with FB (and some other social media platforms) is that they are set up (algorithms etc..) to maximize engagement. Period. Not good engagement, not bad engagement, just engagement. And because we are animals, the types of content that most drive engagement are those that appeal to our emotions.
Id already ditched FB when I started to read the stories about how when folks posted “erroneous”content to criticize it they found out instead they were giving it broader coverage because FB was noting the increased engagement and promoting the bad content as a result. Unless you write FBs algorithms there is no way to fix that so best just to not participate.
chris
@Jay:
It is indeed a good thing.
Jay
@randy khan:
Everytime you click, link or cite “fake news” on social media, that is recorded by the social media site. Algorythms utilize clicks, links, cites, along with AI ratings that reward outrage and anger by uprating, and downrate inoffensive material, to then promote that material in search functions, feeds, autoplay and recommendations.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/12/02/news/pinterests-algorithm-promoted-anti-trudeau-propaganda-during-election
There are ways to debunk and carefully cite, with out feeding the ai and algorythms, but arguing with your RageBook Uncle isn’t it.
Lock Trump Up
Other sources to check out
Fact-Checking Resources from the Society of Professional Journalists
https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/2019/11/29/urban_legendsfact-checking
Verification Junkie
A growing directory of tools for verifying, fact checking and assessing the validity of eyewitness reports and user generated content online.
https://verificationjunkie.com
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
FTFY.
Jay
Thread, snip,
Jay
Yarrow
My local radio station is airing a NYT podcast called The Daily. Today’s subject was education. Link. At the end of it they discussed an alarming statistic that only 14% of American students can tell the difference between fact and opinion.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: That’s enough out of you, Baud9000.
Dmbeaster
@Mike G: I think we had a Russian troll at that time posting comments to that effect here.
Also, who was manning the Buk SAM that shot down the plane? It was almost certainly Russian military, and not separatists.
Jay
Example of Citizen Journalist debunking,
Gin & Tonic
@Jay: Dude, if you would read this blog instead of just posting, you’d be aware that I posted this Twitter thread about three hours ago.
Lock Trump Up
Good Collection of Articles to Avoid Getting Duped by Fake News
https://factcheckingday.com/
A Database about critical thinking and media, data, and misinformation literacy
https://educheckmap.factcheckingday.com/#/projects
Jay
@Dmbeaster:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/07/17/jit-indictments-and-reactions-analyzing-new-evidence-linking-separatists-and-russian-officials-to-mh17/
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: Thought it look familiar ?.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
you might not have noticed, but a bunch of stuff “we” as individuals, think is important, often gets reposted, sometimes over days,
often, we don’t credit the person who first posted the info.
delk
Cleaning up the Internet one share at a time
Jay
dnfree
@Jeffro: I shared on Facebook also, with credit to Cheryl. This is important.
Dan B
@trollhattan: So clever….
John Revolta
@Yarrow: That’s…………I don’t even know what to say about that.
I can’t read the transcript (paywall). Does that mean they can’t tell the difference or they don’t know what the definitions are?
sdhays
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t know how you can trust a man who MURDERED Richard Mayhew.
Yarrow
@John Revolta: It’s not paywalled for me. Here’s the relevant bit:
NotMax
@Yarrow
Frankly, surprised the percentage is that low. The young aren’t exactly the most discerning or discriminating of consumers, having such short history and/or points of reference to draw upon in developing and asserting credulity. Plus peer pressure is a powerful instrument for both filtering out information and setting boundaries on what is accepted by the group.
Callow youth is not an empty phrase.
Jay
@Yarrow:
making things sketchier yet, a bunch of the Russian troll farms have taken up a side business, where for payment, they will fake news promote “your” Company, or fake news trash a Competitor, as a means of subsidizing Russian Disinfo Ops.
Amir Khalid
@Mike G:
Some of that Russian disinformation even got to our beloved 92-year-old PM Dr Mahathir, when he recently disparaged the findings of the four-year multinational investigation into the MH17 shootdown. He claimed the Russians couldn’t have done it because, um, y’know, reasons. I never thought I would see a PM piss on the graves of murdered Malaysians like that.
Yarrow
@NotMax: In other countries (Sweden, Finland) they teach students how to identify disinformation and combat it. We have states where the board of education actively discourages critical thinking. It’s not surprising our students are so good at this sort of thing.
Yarrow
@Yarrow: *aren’t.
John Revolta
@Yarrow: Thank you. Bloody terrifying. And I don’t believe it came about by accident.
Another scary fact I did get at the link:
MobiusKlein
@Jay:
Regarding the Russian and other agents of chaos:
Be doubly cautious of sources guiding you to fear, distrust, and hatred. Especially when you already are predisposed to agree.
Civility is not about playing nice with folks you disagree with – it’s to avoid being manipulated by other triggering your lizard brain.
Eric NNY
Good stuff. Thanks Cheryl!
Roger Moore
@Yarrow:
I’m thinking of my education. In my high school speech class, a big section was on persuasive speaking, where we were taught how to use all the different tropes of advertising: repetition, bandwagoning, etc. I always assumed this was at least in part so we’d be able to recognize those techniques when they were used against us.
NotMax
@NotMax
No edit. I meant to type “surprised the percentage is that high.” Brain-to-fingers glitch. I suspect that 14% would not be an all that much of an outlier compared with similar studies from the past (if any were ever carried out).
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Russian disinfo and social media ops centered on Ukraine started long before Crimea. They continued with little push back into 2018 for a large variety of reasons, but a big one, was that while the Western IC was recording/etc evidence of Russian and Separatist lies in real time, they wern’t effectively making that information public.
The lies got over a 4 year head start.
Baud
@Yarrow:
text from report
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_USA.pdf
Lock Trump Up
A Guide to Crap Detection Resources
https://docs.google.com/document/d/163G79vq-mFWjIqMb9AzYGbr5Y8YMGcpbSzJRutO8tpw/edit
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Clockwise looking at motion from below or above?
Details matter.
:-)
Baud
@Baud:
More
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/99c14352-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/99c14352-en&mimeType=text/html
Sloane Ranger
@Adam L Silverman: Does the chicken need to be alive or dead?
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
Re that russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter link, thanks for linking that piece. To everyone; it’s worth at least a skim. Another quote (I had it queued up but forgot; this is a good thread for it.)
J R in WV
@Jay:
I don’t know who Leah McElrath is… but here in WV I heard this story, and also learned that the Nazis involved were all fired already. And the people in the training class were probably too naive to know what was going on, which is why THEY WERE BLURRED OUT in the photo.
The supervisors who induced that behavior, on the other hand, have lost their jobs, their pensions, their medical care, which is all in all a good thing.
Thanks for spreading 23 different instances of disinformation right here in front of everyone in this disinformation thread, ass!! Post after post with no justification, no verification, nothing but Jay and the stupid post you quoted to us. Talk about “Responsible speech” but do nothing to forward such a rare beast.
If I were a front pager, you would be history already, Jay from somewhere stupid.
Jay
@MobiusKlein:
the “good” trolls come at you sideways. Nice stuff, interesting stuff, just enough (fake) personality and (fake) life stories to get you to engage, in the form of reading, or digital interactions.
they spend months and sometimes years building a personna. They will often use a bot/troll network to “amp” their media output via algorythms, but just because a bot/troll network is amping something on social media, it does not make the poster a troll. Bot/troll networks built “credibility” by “amping” popular postings.
Often, like a human who is being radicalized, they will start off “amping” stuff a little “off” from their personna, like a diss piece on Harris, or Clinton, long before they go ”part troll”.
Their goal is to first “capture” a readership, by being benign, then inciteful, then slowly dragging their captured readership deeper and deeper into the swamp.
I see “cute” vids, posts, comments all the time, but I stick to reposting/engaging with people I know and am leery about “viral” accounts. Emily of the State, Imandy Candy Corn, Socialist Dog Mom are great, but like a real humans, 1:1000, 1:500 posts/comments are worth reposting, 1:10,000 go “viral”. Regularly going “viral” is often a warning flag.
In Serenity, Shepherd Book warns Mel about The Operative, “ this is trouble you ain’t seen. They are true belivers, but they don’t come at you head on, they slide up to sideways, all nice, helpful and like”.
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
Six is common too. Nine is just weird. I mean, 3 * 3, wrong! :-)
But Kabalistic numerology is a bit goofy to my mind.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic:
(Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” 1966. Most famously performed by Marvin Gaye on the eponymous LP, released 1968.)
schrodingers_cat
In Indian politics the false narratives and incitement is coming from the ruling party at the Centre. And its not Russian bots but elderly relatives using WhatsApp who are spreading these memes.
Its a highly centralized operation when the Maharastra state government drama was going on, one way to keep the BJP directed accounts out or at the very least to a minimum was by switching to Marathi.
ETA: Some would try to keep up by using Google translate usually with hilarious results.
ETA2: Husband kitteh was getting whatsapp forwards from his Bhakt uncles in Chennai, I would see the same memes and narratives on Twitter later in the day. Some even made it into the news cycle and one hilariously landed the ex CM in hot water.
Uncle Cosmo
Save your bytes – this Knucklehead Of The Frozen North is an attention junkie who can’t spell, won’t use a spell-checker, & can’t be arsed to learn anything about US government or politics but insists on lecturing us Yanks on what we should be doing. He pied me because I insisted on documenting his frequent fuckups – he sure as shit ain’t gonna listen to you.
planetjanet
I would like to see this post on rotation about once a month. We need the reminder to remain vigilant.
Bill Arnold
@Lock Trump Up:
Those are both interesting links. Thank you. The journaliststoolbox.org link is particularly rich.
Cheryl Rofer
@planetjanet: I plan to continue posting on this topic.
Bill Arnold
@MobiusKlein:
This. As you’re reading, watch over your emotions and changes in them. If reading a piece causes (or appears to cause) strong emotions (also including outrage and disgust and a few others), be alert to the possibility that that was the intent, perhaps at the origination point(s) in the information chain. “Alert” can mean making an extra verification check or three, or occasionally digging deeper. This may seem cynical but sadly it will become increasingly necessary.
As a side effect, if this becomes commonplace much of marketing/consumer capitalism breaks.
Hob
@Yarrow: I mean… yes, I can believe that that kids these days aren’t great at thinking critically about random stuff they read, and they might even be less great than we were back in my day. But since the subject is critical reading skills, I feel like I must nitpick:
1. Most young people probably do not take an exercise like this super seriously, unless there’s some clear benefit to them if they get it right. I myself might have paid attention because I was an insufferable show-off, but then again if the subject was the nutritional value of milk I might have tuned out anyway and been like “fact? I guess? whatever”.
2. It’s not hard to see a misreading of the question which, while it’s not literally right and isn’t what was intended, is actually something a bright kid might fall into. That is, “milk is a good way to lose weight” is more like a fact than it’s like an opinion: it’s in the category of things that can be proven right or proven wrong, not just like “I think Jim Carrey movies are funny.” It’s not uncommon in casual usage for people to talk about a true fact vs. a fact that’s wrong, when what they really mean is it’s a question of fact rather than, say, a question of taste.
If you really want to know whether people have a decent working understanding of a concept, especially people who haven’t done a lot of formal writing and who don’t necessarily get why you’re asking, having them pick between two words is not going to give you good data.
Bill Arnold
@Lock Trump Up:
Thanks again; another nice guide.
randy khan
@Jay:
I don’t think you should assume that I’m doing what you say I’m doing. Because I’m not.
I generally respond only to individuals’ organic posts and not to links. And most of my responses happen on my own social media threads, so if anything is getting more clicks, it’s my own thoughts.
Jay
And the people in the training class were probably too naive to know what was going on, which is why THEY WERE BLURRED OUT in the photo.
Jay
@randy khan:
Viewing, commenting, replying, liking, linking, retweeting, all add to the digital “click”. Algorithms weigh different responses with different values, viewing is rated low, engaging is rated higher.
It’s up to you, how you want to respond to disinfo on the web, but:
https://warontherocks.com/2019/09/the-complicated-truth-of-countering-disinformation/
Chip Daniels
For me, FB and Twitter, whatever benefits they have, are just not worth the harm.
Not just the actual disinformation, but their algorithms that prioritize rage and gossip over information.
Mike G
@MobiusKlein:
Trump is nothing but an agent of chaos.
randy khan
@Jay:
I read your link. It makes me wonder if you read my post.
Searcher
Part of the problem is that skepticism, is a lot of work, but cynicism (think the worst of everyone) and contrarianism (believe the opposite of what the mainstream view is) are really, really easy. Blind adherence, also pretty easy.
It’s hard work to understand an issue, look for evidence, evaluate that evidence carefully, and then — when necessary — accept that the evidence tells you the opposite of what you would really prefer it to. It gets even harder when misinformation is intentionally clouding the issue.
It’s hard enough, that it’s basically impossible for any one person to do, for all subjects. We just don’t have the time in the day to understand and evaluate all of the evidence on topics from global warming to economics to gun control to GMO to big foot. The only way to make progress is to work together as a team, divide the work; but now you have to trust. You have to trust that other people will do their work, evaluate the evidence fairly, and present their findings in an unbiased way. You have to figure out who to trust, and how much to trust them, and how to double check their work periodically just to make sure everything is on the up and up. You have to figure out how to convince other people to trust their work, your work, and to participate and contribute back trustworthy information in return.
It’s a lot of work, and just thinking everyone else is a crook is so much easier; as a bonus, it lets you justify being a crook in return, since there’s no point in being the only honest man.
UncleEbeneezer
@Cheryl Rofer: I’d love to see evidence-based advise for how to deal with the people we deal with directly who push disinformation, because ignoring/being-aware-of the fake sources is only one part of the problem. How do we counter all the regular people in our sphere’s who may not link to bogus sources but take the same mis-truths and believe/spread them. So many things being pushed by fans and haters of candidate X (applies to EVERY candidate), are things that are taken out of context, stripped of nuance, and even downright misleading etc. This stuff is constantly being pushed by regular people not just Russian trolls. I wonder if there is any way for us to meaningfully counter them? Is it even worth trying? Etc.