Ask HN: How do you deal with lies on the internet?

> Lately I've begun to doubt every source of information

That's my approach - it takes a lot of credibility for me to believe anything I find on the Internet. Critical thinking has become a critical skill as it's really the only means of sniffing out the truth. If something smells a little fishy, it's probably a fish.

This is just my opinion, and fwiw I might be totally wrong or off-base, and I am open to suggestions:

Consume your news from multiple sources across political, cultural, and social spectrums. Know where each source comes from, and who is paying for it. Familiarize yourself with what are generally considered "objective" sources as well. So, in the instance of the Russia/Ukraine war, I've been using wikipedia, because it more or less states the facts of events as they happen, without too much bias. So I can make my own opinions. And since it is open-source, everything there faces tons of scrutiny.

This Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

It’s not perfect, but Wikipedia does a good job of being neutral and sticking with facts.

On forums like HN, Facebook and Reddit, I rarely bother with correcting people. The sites are not tailored towards factual information, they’re tailored towards engagement. And dis-information is more engaging (people argue about it) than straight facts.

Follow the trail to the source. Oftentimes, all the major news outlets will cite the same source for an event, but lace the story with their biases in the process. Usually, that single source will only have so much information themselves, so it's easy to see where the other sources' biases take over.

Another comment mentioned Wikipedia, and I'll add it can be also useful here, as it's an easy way to verify if a common factoid on a matter origins from a legitimate source.

reduce area of focus

no need to know everything

for the things that matter [to you] read broadly and infer… hope for the best

I give it time. I'm not likely to be of any use against the war on Ukraine so I'm getting weekly updates for it

Same with Covid, Trump, etc prior. I don't personally need to know this stuff in realtime and I'd probably mentally unravel if I tried to keep up with it all

I simply ignore as much as I can. Some information(especially military) are not supposed to get out to public without tampering.

What helped me a lot was moving everything from "X is..." to "Y claimed X is..." thinking. Then it's easier to spot groups, research them, assign them some mental trust level per-topic, adjust it later, etc. There's nothing wrong then with always keeping "but they may be wrong" in mind. But you'll find a reasonable consensus on reality with time.

Also backing out of stupid places quickly is great. I.e. don't confuse a post on Twitter from someone you trust with the responses to that post. It's going to be almost completely trash if the original poster is even semi-known. They exist in the same area, so need active mental separation.

Counter-intuitive but…

You stop consuming it. You actually do not need to be informed on every topic at every moment. There are people who do this professionally - it’s a full time job and even they get misinformed.

You cannot voraciously consume this stuff while also being immune to propaganda. You’re actually more vulnerable to it the more you consume. Ignorance in this case can actually work in your favor.

Read multiple sources, especially if it comes down to you making a decision on something like voting and then you should read voting history and where a candidate stands on certain policies you care about.

If you are just trying to keep yourself informed, I like NPR or BBC news websites to scan headlines. Lately I feel like the goal of being updated on "current events" is a waste of time but I keep getting pulled in.

Now when reading anything in financial news, it is basically opinion unless there are numbers there. Things like sentiment about investors and headlines like "stocks tumbled today because of XYZ..." People don't know the intent of any action on the stock market because you don't know who is doing what, unless it comes out of SEC financial disclosures. There are a lot of quarterly and annual cycles that happen with large amounts of activity because of index fund re-balancing, options expiring, etc. [0] and it feels like financial news tries to dumb everything down for some reason.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triplewitchinghour.asp

I don't need to know stuff that's happening just this minute. Mostly acting on yesterday's data is just fine and usually that's more reliable than the firehose of current events.

And if you start fighting against the tide of incorrect information, remember the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0]: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law

I'm convinced that just like we'd stretch and warm up before exercise, we need to warm up our skepticism before consuming information.

You can start by reminding your self that what you're about to read was shown to you so someone else can get more money and power.

I Ignore anybody who tells me that a free press is the enemy. I also ignore news that comes packaged with a comment section (HN is the exception).

Meet people in person that are actually working on these issues. I met Jeffery Lewis and Scott LaFoy in DC and talked with both of them about arms control and got their read on Russia and who in the west is nuanced and trustworthy. I also pull information from multiple sources. Al Jazeera, BBC, CBC, NYT, etc and I mentally keep track which voices are later proven wrong and more importantly, I keep track of which voices issue corrections. The least trustworthy journalism has no corrections, which would be preposterous. Everyone makes mistakes.

Read sources with different points of view and take the average. Pretty easy with the Russia-Ukraine situation, just take 2 western or Ukrainian news sources, 2 Russian and 2 relatively unrelated (China, Africa, etc.) Same with elections (2 Dems, 2 Reps, 2-3 unrelated international). Much more difficult with COVID since nearly everybody has the same point of view, and the remaining ones are marginal. IMO, in such a situation the best option to get the truth is to wait for 2-5 years after it is finished.

I'm an American, living in the US, and for situations like Ukraine specifically, I don't believe anything right away. War is chaotic, and social media makes it more so. It costs me nothing to reserve judgement, because nothing depends on me except that I might accidentally share false info. Better to stay quiet, think, and wait. The truth may come out eventually. No one cares if I personally think it's true, but there is some tiny bit of culpability for sharing stories that aren't true.

I think Julia Galef's "scout mentality" can be helpful here. Try to be aware of your biases - do you want this to be true? - and if so, be extra sceptical. Try to consider the possibility of the opposite of what you think being true - what would that look like? And try to assign percentages to your beliefs, instead of booleans. Be prepared to update your views over time as more facts emerge.

It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

My approach is slow thinking. I really don't have to form an opinion quickly on most things. If ever. I read for enjoyment. Something makes it hard to write propaganda that's actually interesting and enjoyable to read.

I've shut down the "engagement" media, even if I agree with them.

Usually I start hating everybody, start a temper tantrum in my room, then my house, then the streets. Everybody in sight needs to know there's somebody wrong - on purpose! - on the internet. My anger convinces everybody immediately, usually. My blood pressure rises, just as my voice. I feel my heart pumping, just as my inevitable headache. But it's all worth it. /s

On a more serious note: just (try to) ignore that sh1t. Every minute spent thinking/feeling about someone else's agenda is a minute not spent on life. Seriously, the magpies in the trees in front of my house are more interesting than any news channel, politician, youtuber, or whatever.

Search for 'no contact' or 'grey rock' with your favorite search engine. I think it can help a lot of people in a lot of situations, just as it helped me. Pro tip: it's not only applicable to the situations it was intended for.

Have a good day y'all! I'm going to watch some magpies.

When there's a lot of lies around and it feels like you are under attack, truth itself becomes something good and valuable. Indeed, what's good is what is true! Lies are false and not good.

And so, I worship God with prayer. goodness and truth is being worshiped by doing so, literally.

It at the very least helps reorganise what's important in life.

Subscribe or visit a quality newspaper, and limit your intake of news to (mostly) that. For international news and high-profile issues like the current war, British newspaper The Guardian is accessible (no paywall) and good. It has a moderate progressive/liberal bias and in general has a solid track record of being factual as well as participating in investigative journalism.

American readers here may be able to suggest suitable US newspapers.

Yes, weighing various sources for a contentious issue is a good thing, but you can't do that for everything. And drinking bits of news from the fire-hose of social media means you have to weigh every nuance and distrust every sender. Good journalism does this for you; just be aware of where any medium stands and what its reputation is (i.e., don't expect the Daily Mail to provide you with a solid analysis of Putin's war).

Being Dutch, I am a subscriber to a Dutch newspaper (NRC; the other quality national newspaper is De Volkskrant) on paper in the weekends and digitally the rest of the week, and supplement this with a yearly contribution for The Guardian, which I visit for a non-Dutch view of certain topics (I found this valuable for the topic of Brexit).

Personally I think old-school independent news media is still the best source of information, although it's best to look at both right- and left-leaning sources to get a good sense of what's real.

And it's best not to read the comment section. To the extent commenters are human at all, they may be paid influencers. And if they are not, people's natural tendency is to repeat the most viral information, which is often incorrect or things that cause outrage in favor of some ideological viewpoint.

About 20 years ago I listened to a photographer talk about his photos of a community hospital. Someone asked him why did he chose this as the work he wanted to pursue. He said (paraphrasing), "When I really want to find out about something, I go study it. I don't listen to the news or read someone's opinion. I really wanted to see what healthcare in America was like, so I convinced a hospital to let me photograph their daily activities for use in their marketing." I try to follow that advice. I largely don't pay attention to the internet, or the news. I skim current events, but beyond that I largely don't deal with it. If I want to learn something, I spend the time to go find out for myself.

I haven't heard this phrase for a while. I learned Scooby-Doo and my dad explained what it meant to me when I was like 5. "Only believe half of what you read and nothing that you see." We've been fabricating news since the beginning of time. It's just more apparent now. The internet didn't start it. It just made it more apparent since more people are in the propaganda game now.

Ignoring what I am not interested in; pretty open to various opinions on what I am interested in, especially if I haven't yet formed my own opinion. Trusting that either I can spot the lies myself or, if not, at least they will challenge my sensemaking apparatus, revealing to me what I do not know or what the weak points in my knowledge are.

Don't know how to properly deal with information that requires my immediate action though (buy a product / not buy a product; invest in bitcoins / not invest in bitcoins; get a vaccine / not get a vaccine, etc.).

Treat the entire internet as a theater designed to capture your attention, to make you think and feel a specific way and in turn to influence your decisions. Do not trust anything coming towards you. If a source is invisible unknown, discard it. If you do not know the person(s)/entities sending information to your mind, how can you possibly trust/know what their intentions are? So yeah, guard your mind well. It is best to only visit the internet a few times a month and even then, treat it all as if it is made up and tailored to control you.