No fooling: Fake news is hard to resist

This editorial appeared in the Orange County Register:

Among its many charms, the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign will be remembered as the time when fake news became a real thing.

The handwringing is well underway. Did lies and hoaxes spread by bogus news outlets and by socialmedia sites sway a lot of voters? What should or could be done, perhaps by the likes of Facebook and Twitter, to limit the problem in the future —without endangering free speech? On this of all issues, the debate should be based on facts, and that means starting with the most basic truth about untruth: People are easily fooled. If you need evidence of that, it’s here in the form of a study from Stanford University.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Education tested students at the middle school, high school and college levels on how well they can distinguish between credible information and opinion, advertising or outright fakes on the internet.

Kids are so tech-savvy, they should be pretty good at that, right?

“We were shocked, to be honest, by how consistently poor these students did,” Joel Breakstone, director of the Stanford History Education Group, told the San Jose Mercury News.

“Across the board, students really struggled. They read for content, and rarely do students consider, ‘Where does this content come from?’”

The study found more than 80 percent of students failed to distinguish between real news content and ads labeled “sponsored content.”

Politicians, internet operators and traditional journalists considering what to do about fake news must be careful not to mess up the exchange of honest information and insight by trying to block the exchange of dishonest misinformation. At the same time, no one should downplay fake news’ existence and how easy it is to be fooled.

That’s a fact.