[Music]
let’s start this in the most exciting
fashion with a disclaimer I probably
shouldn’t give this talk I’m gonna share
a lot of fake stories and studies have
shown the more you share fake stories
the more people believe those fake
stories even if your debunking them so
just by sharing these fake stories I
might be making you dumber right now
you’re welcome
so I have come here to ask you to beg
you to stop being the Internet’s bitch
stop believing in things like this and
this
and this yeah
I’m sorry Brigham City Ryan Gosling’s
not thinking about you as a species we
humans aren’t really doing very well
with how quickly information moves
online we’re clearly having problems
telling the good stuff from the bad and
I’m concerned about this because of the
librarian I deal in information sure
books are my buddies they’re cool but
librarians deal and information so I’ve
always been pretty concerned about
misinformation information produced to
deceive or confuse that’s often shared
online and it seems like the world is
really starting to take notice of this
now too you can’t go anywhere without
hearing about fake news right so the
stakes with fake news can be pretty high
this guy believed in a fake news story
so fervently
that he took a gun to a pizzeria to
investigate a child’s sex ring tied to
the Hillary Clinton campaign now of
course there was no child sex ring and
he’s in jail but I can’t stress enough
that taking a gun with you is a pretty
bad way to fact-check dude should have
totally checked with the librarian
before he you know decided on the gun
route perhaps some of you also saw this
post making the rounds in the 2016
election also now Donald Trump in this
quote calls
Republican voters dumb but the only
problem is he never said this but to
some of us especially those of us with
left-leaning or anti Trump biases it
kind of totally feels like he said it
right but the thing is you can’t feel
your way to truth in fact feelings are
the enemy when it comes to evaluating
information online feelings push you to
abandon logic and react emotionally and
how well does reacting emotionally work
for you in the offline aspects of your
life I bet your husband loves it mine
sure does
visceral emotional reactions work about
as well online as they do in real life
which is to say they’re total crap
misinformation pushers can easily
manipulate us through our emotions and
through our biases they Bank on this
anger Spurs action
it always has if you generate a story
online that elicits an emotional
response you will generate not only
exposure for your website but also
advertising revenues so we need to be
aware of our emotional responses and
biases when we’re evaluating information
online that’s really the only way to do
it you have to be aware of those things
but if emotion and bias are the problem
I hear you ask maybe Facebook are Google
those soulless automatons can solve this
problem for us but algorithms thus far
have not been able to solve this very
human problem and if we leave it up to
nameless programmers and big software
companies to decide what is appropriate
information we’re just really handing
over control to them and worse those who
can beat the algorithm so another big
part of the problem lies in our desire
to see information and black and white
terms good versus evil truth versus lies
it would be so nice to have a bright red
line dividing the bad from the good but
most of the misinformation we see every
day exists in a gray area half-truths
misinterpreted photos quotes taken out
of context and all this has seen through
layers of bias our bias and the author’s
bias color what we see and read making
us more are less likely to feel that
something’s true and the incredibly fast
pace of information online leaves little
time for fact-checking
it only adds to our already disorienting
view so we give up we decide to trust
only NPR our only Fox news we decide
that there’s no news organization we can
trust and so we just keep watching Parks
and Rec over and over and over again
all right but maybe that’s just me but
you can’t simply avoid misinformation
it’s just not possible if you’re part of
this connected modern world and the
fight for true and credible information
is a fight worth waging fake news isn’t
harmless in many cases minced
misinformation creators are trying to
make up your mind for you they’re trying
to influence you to solidify your
support for a certain viewpoint that’s
why it’s so scary if you give up and you
give in you’re basically handing control
over to the loudest voices and those
voices spread misinformation all the
time but some of us aren’t giving up
librarians aren’t giving up my people
we’re developing workshops and websites
to help you steer clear of fake news but
we’re sitting down with people every day
to get to the bottom of viral post and
rumors but all of us not just librarians
not just Google not just Facebook all of
us need to be responsible for the
quality of information we consume fake
news isn’t just your crazy conspiracy
believing Uncle Eddie’s problem it’s our
problem we all need we all live in this
brave new world of lightning-fast
information we can all easily find
consume and share information we need to
accept the responsibilities of this new
information landscape and develop coping
mechanisms to tackle it we could even
engage in some light and gun free
fact-checking every now and then you
could wow your friends online by being
the first to figure out that this
supposed image of a an tyfa demonstrator
beating a policeman in Charlottesville
was actually an altered photo of Greek
protests taken years earlier while
algorithms alone can’t solve this
problem a well-placed reverse Google
image search can certainly help I’d like
to close with a librarians fondest wish
with a little prayer
may we treat every day like it’s April
Fool’s Day we all know how to be
skeptical of information we do it every
year on April 1st and we don’t allow
fake April Fool’s stories to manipulate
our emotions or biases we just think
more critically about information and
our own susceptibility on that day
there’s a lot of misinformation out
there we’ve gotten to the point where
the internet thinks every day is April
Fool’s we just need to catch up and
start acting like it too
you
let’s start this in the most exciting
fashion with a disclaimer I probably
shouldn’t give this talk I’m gonna share
a lot of fake stories and studies have
shown the more you share fake stories
the more people believe those fake
stories even if your debunking them so
just by sharing these fake stories I
might be making you dumber right now
you’re welcome
so I have come here to ask you to beg
you to stop being the Internet’s bitch
stop believing in things like this and
this
and this yeah
I’m sorry Brigham City Ryan Gosling’s
not thinking about you as a species we
humans aren’t really doing very well
with how quickly information moves
online we’re clearly having problems
telling the good stuff from the bad and
I’m concerned about this because of the
librarian I deal in information sure
books are my buddies they’re cool but
librarians deal and information so I’ve
always been pretty concerned about
misinformation information produced to
deceive or confuse that’s often shared
online and it seems like the world is
really starting to take notice of this
now too you can’t go anywhere without
hearing about fake news right so the
stakes with fake news can be pretty high
this guy believed in a fake news story
so fervently
that he took a gun to a pizzeria to
investigate a child’s sex ring tied to
the Hillary Clinton campaign now of
course there was no child sex ring and
he’s in jail but I can’t stress enough
that taking a gun with you is a pretty
bad way to fact-check dude should have
totally checked with the librarian
before he you know decided on the gun
route perhaps some of you also saw this
post making the rounds in the 2016
election also now Donald Trump in this
quote calls
Republican voters dumb but the only
problem is he never said this but to
some of us especially those of us with
left-leaning or anti Trump biases it
kind of totally feels like he said it
right but the thing is you can’t feel
your way to truth in fact feelings are
the enemy when it comes to evaluating
information online feelings push you to
abandon logic and react emotionally and
how well does reacting emotionally work
for you in the offline aspects of your
life I bet your husband loves it mine
sure does
visceral emotional reactions work about
as well online as they do in real life
which is to say they’re total crap
misinformation pushers can easily
manipulate us through our emotions and
through our biases they Bank on this
anger Spurs action
it always has if you generate a story
online that elicits an emotional
response you will generate not only
exposure for your website but also
advertising revenues so we need to be
aware of our emotional responses and
biases when we’re evaluating information
online that’s really the only way to do
it you have to be aware of those things
but if emotion and bias are the problem
I hear you ask maybe Facebook are Google
those soulless automatons can solve this
problem for us but algorithms thus far
have not been able to solve this very
human problem and if we leave it up to
nameless programmers and big software
companies to decide what is appropriate
information we’re just really handing
over control to them and worse those who
can beat the algorithm so another big
part of the problem lies in our desire
to see information and black and white
terms good versus evil truth versus lies
it would be so nice to have a bright red
line dividing the bad from the good but
most of the misinformation we see every
day exists in a gray area half-truths
misinterpreted photos quotes taken out
of context and all this has seen through
layers of bias our bias and the author’s
bias color what we see and read making
us more are less likely to feel that
something’s true and the incredibly fast
pace of information online leaves little
time for fact-checking
it only adds to our already disorienting
view so we give up we decide to trust
only NPR our only Fox news we decide
that there’s no news organization we can
trust and so we just keep watching Parks
and Rec over and over and over again
all right but maybe that’s just me but
you can’t simply avoid misinformation
it’s just not possible if you’re part of
this connected modern world and the
fight for true and credible information
is a fight worth waging fake news isn’t
harmless in many cases minced
misinformation creators are trying to
make up your mind for you they’re trying
to influence you to solidify your
support for a certain viewpoint that’s
why it’s so scary if you give up and you
give in you’re basically handing control
over to the loudest voices and those
voices spread misinformation all the
time but some of us aren’t giving up
librarians aren’t giving up my people
we’re developing workshops and websites
to help you steer clear of fake news but
we’re sitting down with people every day
to get to the bottom of viral post and
rumors but all of us not just librarians
not just Google not just Facebook all of
us need to be responsible for the
quality of information we consume fake
news isn’t just your crazy conspiracy
believing Uncle Eddie’s problem it’s our
problem we all need we all live in this
brave new world of lightning-fast
information we can all easily find
consume and share information we need to
accept the responsibilities of this new
information landscape and develop coping
mechanisms to tackle it we could even
engage in some light and gun free
fact-checking every now and then you
could wow your friends online by being
the first to figure out that this
supposed image of a an tyfa demonstrator
beating a policeman in Charlottesville
was actually an altered photo of Greek
protests taken years earlier while
algorithms alone can’t solve this
problem a well-placed reverse Google
image search can certainly help I’d like
to close with a librarians fondest wish
with a little prayer
may we treat every day like it’s April
Fool’s Day we all know how to be
skeptical of information we do it every
year on April 1st and we don’t allow
fake April Fool’s stories to manipulate
our emotions or biases we just think
more critically about information and
our own susceptibility on that day
there’s a lot of misinformation out
there we’ve gotten to the point where
the internet thinks every day is April
Fool’s we just need to catch up and
start acting like it too
you
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