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Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Did you forget something? Gitka’s 21st birthday: Helping people fact-check on their own

“Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on The High Tatra snow.”

“Lives are like rivers: Eventually they go where they must. Not where we want them to.”

Gitka Imrichová quoted by Richard Russo, author and screenwriter

 “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”

On Death, Khalil Gibran, artist, poet and author

My four sister you are with me always – whether near or far.

For you see, we’re connected

by the heart. . .



 Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man. 

.— Elizabeth Bowen, born in 1899

National Geographic – To enact change in the world, we must protest – African Americans have a legacy of fighting for their rights in the U.S.—today, the movement has become global…. Now, America is experiencing another wave of social unrest and civil disobedience. We have little choice. Neither Minneapolis nor its police officers represent an American police anomaly. But the killing of Floyd has exposed an awful truth, and radical change is needed. The almost casual nature of Floyd’s murder by Derek Chauvin, a veteran Minneapolis police officer criminally charged with his death, along with three other officers, reveals how black Americans continue to be targeted, brutalized, and often killed simply because their race renders them suspect. Being black is a pre-existing condition when it comes to law enforcement interaction. Sadly, that state of affairs isn’t breaking news. The news is the sustained intensity of the demand for systemic change being heard both here and abroad in the wake of Floyd’s murder. The geographically and racially diverse protest furor gives guarded hope for meaningful social progress on the policing issues. As America remains firmly locked in a dangerously crowded intersection of pandemic health fears and unleashed anger against the criminal justice system, the focused rage has gone global…”

See also from Nat Geo – Photos can show protests’ complexity—or they can perpetuate old lies – Pictures from demonstrations around the U.S. can become powerful symbols, but some only tell one side of the story.


The dumbest generation …

 EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Students haven't heard of Tiananmen Square, won't say China is a threat.
  
Washington Post – A citizen’s guide to not helping trolls, bots and other online disinformers during turbulent times – “Everyone knows you shouldn’t feed a troll. But more than ever, you should go out of your way not to retweet, share or follow one, either. First came the pandemic. Now we’re facing an infodemic. Misinformation from so-called trolls, bots and other online agitators is spiking about the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, following a tsunami of falsehoods about the coronavirus. And the people who care most intensely about those issues may be inadvertently spreading it further — a hard-learned lesson from social media meddling in the 2016 and 2018 elections. To avoid being taken advantage of, we need to learn their ways — and learn some new techniques of our own to challenge what we see on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Reddit and Nextdoor. Whether you’re 16 or 60, spending a few seconds to do the things I list below can help keep you from becoming a tool in someone else’s information war

The FT has an article this morning that suggests that there will be at least 5 million people unemployed in the UK once the furlough scheme comes to an end in October.
As the The scale of the economic crisis about to hit us is almost unimaginable puts it, when quoting James Reed, chairman of recruitment firm Reed and co-founder of Keep Britain Working, a campaign to reskill workers whose jobs are at risk:
At this moment a ‘day of reckoning’ for jobs when furlough comes to an end is a danger. When this happens the country will be highly vulnerable to unemployment rising to five million people or 15 per cent of the workforce. These would be levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s — a harrowing thought. 
I do not dispute this logic, or the conclusion, but I do think that the estimate of the number of people unemployed is wrong. I very strongly suspect that Mr Reed has not taken the number of self-employed people who will now be unemployed into account when coming to his total, and as a result I think that the real number will be closer to 7 million, then 5 million, and the total might exceed 20% of the workforce.
The scale of the economic crisis about to hit us is almost unimaginable, and if the government believes that it will face a shortage of cash when tackling it then the consequences will be of any recognisable scale.
There is a moment for any idea. This is that moment for modern monetary theory. An understanding of it is going to be vital to the survival of our society, and that of many others.


Helping people fact-check on their own

Fact-checkers and other journalists who work to debunk misinformation spend most of their time arming people with the facts. In recent weeks, we’ve also seen them arm people with strategies to root out the falsehoods on their own.
The “infodemic” surrounding COVID-19 had already pushed fact-checkers to capacity. The killing of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis police May 25 brought about a whole new flood of hoaxes, conspiracy theories and images and videos taken out of context. As usual, BuzzFeed’s Jane Lytvynenko has been collecting the falsehoods on Twitter and her list this week gives a sense of the scale of the problem. 
To stem the spread of falsehoods, some journalists and fact-checkers are sharing basic fact-checking and verification strategies with their audiences. 
USA Today’s Jessica Guynn published one such story this week, showing people how to detect certain falsehoods about the protests over Floyd’s killing, and giving suggestions on how to avoid spreading them.
Rolling Stone, too, walked its readers through some misinformation fundamentals, including cautions about fake captions, donation solicitors and posts about missing people, among others.
At the MIT Technology Review, Abby Ohlheiser did her own take on how people can hit “pause” before hitting “share.” HuffPost is having a virtual event Monday to talk with readers about how to “think before you link.” 
We’ve seen other examples of this kind of service journalism recently around COVID-19. 
CNBC’s Chrstina Farr recently spoke with a range of experts about how to respond when friends and family spread coronavirus myths. 
Also last month, (Poynter-owned) PolitiFact’s Daniel Funke outlined six ways people can fact-check coronavirus misinformation on their social media timelines. He cited research showing that when people correct misinformation on their social media feeds, misperceptions decrease.
One piece of advice frequently cited in these pieces is to be careful with content that triggers an emotional response. Hoaxers and nefarious online actors love to play on emotion. 
As USA Today’s Guynn put it: “Watch out for posts that make your blood boil.”
These days, of course, the real stuff is enough to make your blood boil – making it even more critical to differentiate the truth from the fakes. 
– Susan Benkelman, API

. . . technology

    • Many experts think the executive order, which directs federal agencies to investigate and possibly penalize social media companies for how they handle posts on their platforms, has little legal force. However, a tech group filed suit in response to the order, claiming it violates free speech.
    • On Tuesday, Twitter released more details about its content moderation policy in an attempt to shed light on some of the platform’s recent decision making.
  • The platforms this week removed a number of accounts pushing rhetoric that pretended to be from adherents of “antifa,” which is short for anti-fascist and is often used to refer to leftist militants who confront neo-Nazis at demonstrations. 
    • Twitter took down an account that claimed to belong to a national antifa group but was actually linked to a white nationalist group known as Identity Evropa, NBC reported.
    • One particularly viral falsehood asserted that antifa would be transporting people to small cities for protests, The Associated Press reported.

. . . politics

  • The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, which has analyzed, categorized and tracked every one of President Trump’s suspect statements, reported this week that he had made 19,127 false or misleading claims as of May 29. 
    • The Fact Checker’s leader, Glenn Kessler, said in a piece for USA Today that the project started as an effort to write deeply about policy issues so as to avoid chasing down every “bizarre tweet” by the president. “But once Trump effectively became his own press secretary in mid-2018, our weekends and evenings were soon lost to the depressing task of wading through the president’s forest of falsehoods.”

. . . science and health 

  • People who feel disinformed (intentionally misled) about COVID-19 are less likely to comply with disease precautions than those who feel misinformed (unintentionally misled) according to a study by researchers at the University of Amsterdam. 
    • Overall, study participants perceived there was more misinformation than active disinformation about COVID-19.
    • Those who perceived there was more disinformation were less likely to seek out reputable sources of information.
  • In the not-all-misinformation-is-digital department, the Cleveland health department has asked residents to ignore fake coronavirus “warnings” on flyers that have been posted around the city. The flyer has a radiation symbol on it and warns “COVID-19… DO NOT ENTER.”
This fact-check from Lead Stories is a prime example of how previously published content can be repackaged to create new disinformation. The claim states that the hacktivist group Anonymous exposed new incriminating court documents accusing President Trump of rape and pedophilia. 
Lead Stories fact-checker Alexis Tereszcuk started by laying out previous coverage of the case. She then linked to previously published and publicly available court fillings that match the supposedly “new” documentation uncovered by Anonymous. She capped her fact-check by noting the real case against the president had been dismissed years ago, and linked to an article explaining the details. 
What we liked: This fact-check is a reminder of why individuals need to be vigilant about information they see online, even if it comes from a group like Anonymous whose previous exploits have gained them credibility in the activist community. It also reminds us of how easy it is for information to be taken out of context.
– Harrison Mantas, IFCN 

  1. The schedule for Virtual Global Fact 7 taking place between June 22-30 is now live. Read about this year’s conference here.
  2. Facebook is criticizing Singapore’s online misinformation law, saying it is “severe” and holds potential for misuse, AFP reported.
  3. Snapchat will no longer feature President Trump’s account on its “Discover” homepage, Cecilia Kang and Kate Conger reported for The New York Times.
  4. IFCN Director Baybars Örsek offered this Twitter thread explaining the basics of fact-checking and differentiating the practice from a tech company’s content moderation.
  5. In Brazil, investigators are charging that disinformation about critics of President Jair Bolsonaro is being generated by those closest to the president, The Washington Post reported.

courtesy of
Susan and Harrison
at