Truth on the Internet

You can find all sorts of things on the internet, and it is hard to know what to trust.  The sheer quantity of information available inherently makes it difficult to sort through.  That is the whole reason search engines were invented.  The internet did exist before them, they weren't part of the "original plan" back when Al Gore invented the internet.

One of the original sources of misinformation was The Onion, a satirical news site.  Their stories were absurdly outlandish, and poked irreverent fun at a whole host of different things.  I have a sense of humor, so I was not opposed to what they were doing.  More recently, many more sites with made up news stories have appeared.  These are usually associated by people as something similar, satirical news.  But these new ones have little humor or deeper meaning to their stories, they are just lies.  The more outlandish the headline the better, and then unlike the Onion, they try to make the actual story as plausible as possible, regardless of how true it is.

Lots of people read these and share them with others, assuming they are true.  Unlike the Onion, it is hard to tell the truth from the fiction, and they are written that way deliberately.  And I finally realized this is the newest generation of intrusive advertising, like spam or pop-ups in the past.

Based on the way online advertising usually works, more visits or "hits" means more revenue.  So the creators of these sites put the most shocking content on them that they can dream up, hoping that the headlines will catch people's attention and hold their curiosity long enough for them to want to know more.  Now if the story was so ridiculous that you could tell right away that it was false, then it would not hold the reader's interest.  But if they believe it is, or even just might be true, then they will want to know more.  And then selectively providing links to related articles both confirms to the reader that this is part of a larger story, and provides more potential clicks and hits, and therefore more money for the host.  And getting it shared on Facebook or things like that just further magnifies its exposure and revenue generating audience.

The end result of all of this, is that the current system has set up an interesting set of incentives.  There are lots of people out in the world, at this very moment, trying to create the most believable pack of lies that they can come up with, purely to drive traffic and revenue to their site.  No one monitors what they are doing, and there is nothing illegal about it.  But it has all sorts of negative effects.  It misinforms the public, and anyone gullible enough to believe the stories.  It also adds lots of false content to the internet, making it harder to trust information found there.  And if some outlandish story is actually true, it is going to be very hard to share it, since most people will dismiss it as another satirical story trying to fool them into believing it.  So much for journalistic integrity.

People used to be worried that such a high percentage of the younger population got their news primarily from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.  But that isn't so bad, they are usually just making fun of the truth, as opposed to propagating lies.  Truth has both practical and spiritual significance, and is becoming harder and harder to find.  While all of these new technological developments could make it easier to confirm and verify truth of communications and stories, it actually is making it more difficult.