![]() When possible, news outlets will print a person’s real name and quote them directly, and since most reputable journalists won’t risk their job by fabricating a quote or a source wholesale, those quotes are usually reliable. Interviews and direct quotesįirsthand interviews are a core element of journalism. Many of the filings only show allegations, but they’re a reliable picture of what the authorities think is happening in a particular case. ![]() You can often find the original documents as links in the article, or uploaded to third-party sites like Scribd, DocumentCloud, or CourtListener. Stories involving specific crimes are often drawn directly from legal filings, which are usually publicly available. Here are some particular sources to look for: A legal filing Outside these specific cases, the general technique is almost stupidly simple: if a story grabs your attention for any reason, slow down and look closer.Įven if you don’t trust a particular outlet, you can often use their reporting to work back to primary sources, which you can use to fact-check what the outlet is saying or cast it in a different light. The techniques are relatively common across different types of story, and they’re not hard to recognize. Once you start looking, you’ll notice specific subtypes of this content - like ragebait designed to get traffic from people’s anger, hyperpartisan appeals that twist the facts, or outright scams. The first step is honing your sense of when a given piece of content is too good (or bad) to be true. It’s hard to be vigilant all the time, but there are a few red flags that indicate something might be misleading. It’s a system for slowing down and thinking about information - whether that information is true, false, or something in between. So this isn’t just a guide to spotting when something is fake. It took me years to really understand where all the information I saw online was coming from. It’s worth slowing down and carefully navigating their traps - to avoid spreading an alarming false rumor, getting angry at a group of people for something they didn’t do, or perpetuating an honest misunderstanding.Īnd as a person who does care deeply about putting true things online, I know I’ve personally misunderstood stories because I didn’t think to look more closely, and not always because somebody was deliberately fooling me. But the internet is full of grifters, tricksters, and outright liars who rely on people’s basic trust to amplify their message. A lot of the problems are exacerbated by companies, governments, and other factors that individuals can’t control. I don’t want to blame people who fall for these tricks. ![]() It’s cynically exploited by businesses for ad-supported “fake news,” by scammers raising money online, and by authoritarian governments to spread hate and fear. This kind of viral half-truth is part of the fabric of today’s internet, and the kind of anger it inspired has been turned into a dangerous commodity. Retweeting the photo would have just outraged people about something that had seemingly never happened. The building manager denied writing them to both the author and a reporter, suggesting that this was either a prank or an immediately abandoned plan. It was surprising, but on a gut level, exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect from a greedy landlord - the kind of thing that’s easy to furiously retweet without thinking.īut a little digging showed that the photo was uploaded to Reddit back in 2013, and the post’s author said the signs were quickly taken down. Somebody had tweeted a photo of a paper sign in an apartment building, informing tenants that using the elevator would soon cost $35 a month. By Adi Robertson Dec 3, 2019, 9:04am ESTĪ few months ago, I got angry about something on Twitter.
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