{"id":35557,"date":"2023-11-16T02:27:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T02:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=35557"},"modified":"2023-11-18T22:25:50","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T22:25:50","slug":"no-youre-not-that-good-at-detecting-fake-videos-%e2%88%92-2-misinformation-experts-explain-why-and-how-you-can-develop-the-power-to-resist-these-deceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/no-youre-not-that-good-at-detecting-fake-videos-%e2%88%92-2-misinformation-experts-explain-why-and-how-you-can-develop-the-power-to-resist-these-deceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"No, you\u2019re not that good at detecting fake videos \u2212 2 misinformation experts explain why and how you can develop the power to resist these\u00a0deceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sam Wineburg<\/a>, Stanford University<\/a><\/em> and Michael Caulfield<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone tracking the conflict raging in the Middle East could have seen the following two videos on social media. The first shows a little boy hovering over his father\u2019s dead body, whimpering in Arabic, \u201cDon\u2019t leave me.\u201d The second purports to show a pregnant woman with her stomach slashed open and claims to document the testimony of a paramedic who handled victims\u2019 bodies after Hamas\u2019 attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though these videos come from different sides of the Israel-Hamas war, what they share far exceeds what separates them. Because both videos, though real, have nothing to do with the events they claim to represent. The clip of the boy<\/a> is from Syria in 2016; the one of the woman<\/a> is from Mexico in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheap but effective fakes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Recent headlines warn of sophisticated, AI-driven deepfakes<\/a>. But it is low-tech cheap fakes like these that fuel the latest round of disinformation. Cheap fakes are the Swiss army knife in the propagandist\u2019s tool belt. Changing a date, altering a location or even repurposing a clip from a video game<\/a> and passing it off as battlefield combat require little know-how yet effectively sow confusion. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qgjHFvp5aaU?wmode=transparent&start=0 The Israel-Hamas war has unleashed a flood of fake videos on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that you can avoid being taken in by these ruses \u2013 not by examining the evidence closely, which is liable to mislead you, but by waiting until trusted sources verify what you\u2019re looking at. This is often hard to do, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people are ill-equipped to detect this kind of trickery. Research that we review in our new book, \u201cVerified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online<\/a>,\u201d shows that almost everyone falls for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the largest survey of its kind, 3,446 high school students evaluated a video on social media that purported to show election fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary. Students could view the whole video, part of it or leave the footage to search the internet for information about it. Typing a few keywords into their browsers would have led students to articles from Snopes<\/a> and the BBC debunking the video. Only three students \u2013 less than one-tenth of 1% \u2013 located the true source of the video<\/a>, which had, in fact, been shot in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your lying eyes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Why were students so consistently duped? The problem, we\u2019ve found, is that many people, young and old alike, think they can look at something online and tell what it is<\/a>. You don\u2019t realize how easily your eyes can be deceived \u2013 especially by footage that triggers your emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When an incendiary video dodges your prefrontal cortex and lands in your solar plexus, the first impulse is to share your outrage with others. What\u2019s a better course of action? You might assume that it is to ask whether the clip is true or false. But a different question \u2013 rather, a set of related questions \u2013 is a better starting place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n