Can I be self congratulatory for a moment? That was way too easy. The fake ones were really surprisingly telegraphed. I got 100% no sweat, dead center between ‘too credulous’ and ‘too incredulous’
It’s really hard for me to imagine people not being able to tell at a glance whether this kind of content is believable or not. Also I feel like it’s quite a giveaway that the misinformation headlines are all MAGA-fodder - government conspiracies and race stuff.
Some of the "real" (sounding) headlines could be easily have been made up though or have been the output of a hallucinating LLM. Like a headline claiming a plausible result of a purported study that may have never happened. If we mark that as real ...are we gullible?
Some of the "fake" (sounding) headlines could have been actual headlines of a major media outlet -- trying to polarize its viewers, or clickbaited to get views and engagement. If we mark it as fake but it was a actual headlike on one of the three letter networks, are we too distrustful?
Leaving aside the obviously fake ones, those that are in the realm of possibility should be assessed hy each individual based on tge content of the article, not just the headlines, paying attention to any slants, checking if they provide verifiable references and checking someof those references if necessary to verify interpretation.
Coming to a conclusion about a headline being fake or real -- just based on that headline alone -- is probably a bad heuristic that should be discouraged.
PS: also the "fake" news samples here are mostly right wing conspiracies. Wonder if it could have been more balanced. If there were more fake items about immigration, abortion, taxation, gender and race discrimination, policing, law and order, gerrymandering, etc. there may be some respondednts who will more easily get misled.
Also 100%. It was so easy I got confused to whether or not I was supposed to identifying fake-fake news or real-fake news from fake-real and real-real.
Got 89% overall, was a couple that I had to think about but mainly because I forgot to treat them as news headlines not simple statements of "fact"... But overall not bad... this was interesting. It did seem to have a bit of a "stuff you might have seen this year" sort of a vibe, which would have been interesting to see countered with an anachronistic old time headline version...
Not at all. It's a test to discern journalistic integrity of the writer/publication; not whether or not the headline is true/false.
Fake news uses loaded (emotionally charged) words and tends to assert its conclusions as though they are irrefutable facts; placing its own biases front and center. Real journalism is more like real science, in that it uses more matter-of-fact wording and avoids broad or concrete assertions beyond the scope of the underlying information — as no amount of observation or evidence can ever achieve a 100% certainty of fact or remove all possibility of bias.
Your comment indicates you do not understand the difference between the two.
Gut instinct based on tone is a useful heuristic, but for a "comprehensive test" of whether you can "beat misinformation" I feel there should be at the very least some examples where it's not made obvious in that way, and ideally even an example that intentionally subverts that expectation by giving a headline that sounds crazy/conspiracy-theorist but is actually true.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 67.2 ms ] threadIt’s really hard for me to imagine people not being able to tell at a glance whether this kind of content is believable or not. Also I feel like it’s quite a giveaway that the misinformation headlines are all MAGA-fodder - government conspiracies and race stuff.
I got 90%.
Some of the "real" (sounding) headlines could be easily have been made up though or have been the output of a hallucinating LLM. Like a headline claiming a plausible result of a purported study that may have never happened. If we mark that as real ...are we gullible?
Some of the "fake" (sounding) headlines could have been actual headlines of a major media outlet -- trying to polarize its viewers, or clickbaited to get views and engagement. If we mark it as fake but it was a actual headlike on one of the three letter networks, are we too distrustful?
Leaving aside the obviously fake ones, those that are in the realm of possibility should be assessed hy each individual based on tge content of the article, not just the headlines, paying attention to any slants, checking if they provide verifiable references and checking someof those references if necessary to verify interpretation.
Coming to a conclusion about a headline being fake or real -- just based on that headline alone -- is probably a bad heuristic that should be discouraged.
PS: also the "fake" news samples here are mostly right wing conspiracies. Wonder if it could have been more balanced. If there were more fake items about immigration, abortion, taxation, gender and race discrimination, policing, law and order, gerrymandering, etc. there may be some respondednts who will more easily get misled.
Fake news uses loaded (emotionally charged) words and tends to assert its conclusions as though they are irrefutable facts; placing its own biases front and center. Real journalism is more like real science, in that it uses more matter-of-fact wording and avoids broad or concrete assertions beyond the scope of the underlying information — as no amount of observation or evidence can ever achieve a 100% certainty of fact or remove all possibility of bias.
Your comment indicates you do not understand the difference between the two.