That's a Fact, Jack!
Disinformation, misinformation, opinion, and AI
One of my nieces worked for a top PR firm in Manhattan. I asked her what type of projects she spent most of her time on.
I always thought of PR as the promotion of products, people, or ideas. Creative advertising campaigns and clever slogans come to mind. But, she told me that the majority of her day was spent on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work.
A Search Engine Optimization or SEO Specialist tests, analyzes, and changes a website so it is optimized for search engines, and the website subsequently ranks higher in the search results on major search engines such as Google and Bing.
I thought I knew what she was referring to, as I had a tiny bit of experience with SEO when considering things like formatting a title for an article, for instance.
That’s not what she was referring to though. Her SEO work involved developing positive web content to drown out unfavorable search results.
Burying negative search results starts with publishing positive content, such as news articles, blog posts and more. Use search engine optimization to ensure that your new or existing content appears on the first page of the SERPs. (link)
And, highly paid PR folks do this work not just for major corporations to sell their products, but also to sway public opinion on political issues (things like tax breaks for the wealthy, increased fossil fuel extraction, and weapons sales) that favor the 1% of billionaires who run corporations.
So we are told that the Pentagon needs more funding for weapons systems, that fracking has to increase to keep us competitive, that social welfare programs must be cut because we simply can’t afford them.
Most people will believe the first story that they read on a topic. And as a story is picked up and spread by the media, the belief in the validity of the first reporting is strengthened and enhanced.
Very few people take the time to research anything. And, most of those folks who try, will turn to Google for research.
Statistics from Advanced Web Rankings show that more than 30% of users click on the first result, which goes down to 2% for the 10th result.
The first page of results on a Google search usually include a Wikipedia entry. And, often folks will believe what they read on Wikipedia. Who writes Wikipedia?
You do. Yes, anyone can be bold and edit an existing article or create a new one, and volunteers do not need to have any formal training. The people who create and edit articles on Wikipedia come from many countries, with individuals who all bring something different with them, but most importantly a willingness to help in building a free encyclopedia of reliable information. Any contributor to this encyclopedia, unregistered and registered alike, is called a "Wikipedian", or, more formally, an "editor" of the encyclopedia. Almost all Wikipedians are volunteers.
I’m always surprised that so many people don’t know this about Wikipedia. Who are the top contributors to Wikipedia (according to Wikipedia)?
Mid-20s males and retired males are the largest demographics. See Gender database reports.
10–20% women of various ages, significant underrepresentation acknowledged by Gender bias on Wikipedia and Gender gap
Students (e.g., in the context of a course)
Enthusiasts (e.g., people with interest in a particular subject, like butterflies)
Insiders (e.g., people who work for an organization, such as the Sierra Club)
Dabblers (e.g., people who see some problem with an article and want to help)
Scholars (e.g., researchers who want to use Wikipedia as an additional dissemination platform)
Archivists (e.g., people who work or volunteer at a museum, archive, or library wanting to contribute artifacts, like 18th-century paintings)
Marketers (e.g., individuals, staff, members, or a PR firm seeking to promote a product, service, or brand)
Evil-doers (e.g., spammers, vandals)
And while Wikipedia promotes itself as a community effort that makes an attempt to get differing points of view, you can see by the above demographics just how easy it is to offer an overall extremely biased point of view.
This is not breaking news, of course. But it is an important reminder of how misinformation and disinformation is rapidly spread, and how easy it is for public opinion to be slanted to support the status quo, without question.
And as WikiPedia entries are fed into AI, along with media articles that are prioritized using SEO to promote a particular point of view, our digital collection of “knowledge” gets saturated with opinions masquerading as facts.
It becomes harder and harder for everyday people to distinguish fact from opinion when relying on a Google search for information about what is actually happening in the world.
Of course, this is intentional. A confused public is easily manipulated.
I was once a participant in a current events discussion group that met weekly. I didn’t get my news from the mainstream media. The other participants did. They were quick to tell me that my point of view was informed by “crackpots.”
I once suggested a discussion about the difference between fact and opinion, hoping that they might come up with resources, other than the mainstream media, that would support the facts that they were certain were true.
Their collective response was a mixture of confusion and anger. Who did I think I was to question the facts presented by the “experts” on the news panels? How dare I suggest that the experts were promoting policy with their narratives, and not necessarily sticking to facts.
When I brought up the fact that Fox and MSNBC don’t turn to the same “experts” for their “facts,” it was easy to see what side of political spectrum these folks were on. Yet, each side insisted that only their side’s facts were the correct facts.
Hmm. . .
So, what is a fact? Do facts even exist? I like this explanation from Noam Chomsky:
. . . of course facts exist, and everyone who says that they don’t believe they exist knows they exist. I mean, when they walk out the door, they assume there's a floor that they're going to step on, you know, not that they're going to go to the Center of the Earth, so they assume that facts exist. The claim that facts don't exist is a way of saying don't pay attention to the real world, pay attention to the propaganda that I give you. It's called a narrative these days. So, pay attention to my narrative, you know, something I make up for my own power reasons. (emphasis my own)
Go ahead and watch the whole 2-minute video above. It’s a gem.
But, of course, that’s only my humble opinion.