Information pollution on the Internet, the fake news era | Adriana Garcia | TEDxLaçador

In a very timely lecture, Adriana Garcia talks about information pollution on the Internet, particularly from fake news. She talks about the difficulty of knowing the veracity of information that comes to us through so many social media options and apps, and how we can protect ourselves in regards to this issue.

As a journalist, mother of two girls, international correspondent, and teacher for over 20 years, Adriana Garcia has worked for Reuters of Brazil and USA, studied innovation and leadership in journalism at Stanford University, and today is the Operations Director of Projor, the Institute for the Development of Journalism. Adriana is co-founder of the LabCOLab project that focuses on co-created education for children and juveniles. In 2018, she initiated the project Comprova, an initiative that collaborated with more than 24 communication channels, having the main goal of fighting misinformation during the Brazilian presidential campaign. She believes that creativity, affection and genuine human relationships are key abilities for dealing with the complexities of the present and the future.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Hi. Who among you, nowadays,
besides using social media,

has also used WhatsApp?

Raise your hand.

Everybody, right?

So, the Internet was a wonderful thing
that emerged in the world.

And it's still young, it's only a couple
of decades old, right?

It's brought lots of information,
given voice to those who didn't have one,

and told wonderful stories.

But, last year, I discovered
another side of the Internet.

I was invited to work
on a project called "Comprova,"

which had the goal of mapping

the informational pollution
that circulates around the Internet,

and combating deceptive content

prior to the Brazilian
presidential elections.

Comprova was a coalition
of 24 media channels -

large, small, startups,

radio, TV, newspapers, magazines -

everybody united together
in a common mission

of trying to uncover
and investigate rumors.

Rumors are a type of information
that circulates through media,

and we don't know where they come from.

We don't know who started them
nor what was their intention.

The volume of these rumors
increased a lot before the elections.

Just to give you an idea ...
in three months,

we conducted 146 investigations of rumors
that were going viral on a large scale.

We relied on technology

because the same platforms
this information circulates from

helped us monitor
what was possible to monitor.

Facebook, YouTube ...

WhatsApp, which we couldn't monitor

because it's encrypted
and closed, as you know.

But we asked people,

through a WhatsApp number we bought,

to send us the content
that they were seeing on WhatsApp

should they have doubts or wonder
if the information made sense,

if it was true, or if it wasn't true.

Anyway ...

We started looking at what was going viral

and when content became really popular,

we would look at it more closely.

We investigated 146 stories in depth.

Can you imagine how many were true?

Of those 146, only 8%

were completely true.

The others were either false,

partially false,

or biased, carrying a little bit of truth,

along with information that wasn't
so truthful, aiming to confuse people.

Well ...

the fact is that the platforms helped us.

They financed us because they know
this informational pollution

is circulating there too,

as well as lots of wonderful
information and content,

like what we heard about here today
and are also circulating.

But the 24 channels concluded
that they needed to unite,

for the first time in history,
to investigate together.

That's 24 competing
communication channels,

including two from here,
Rio Grande do Sul.

Well, so what did we find out?

As we were investigating,

people were hearing
about our WhatsApp number

and starting to send us content.

In the beginning of August,

there were dozens.

Later, there were hundreds per day.

And, finally, during the runoff election,
they were thousands per day.

We couldn't even process
the messages we were getting.

The result:

in three months, we got messages

from almost 70 thousand people

who were very distressed with doubts

about what they were reading
on the Internet

and on their WhatsApp messages.

What can I say to you?

To spread misleading information ...

it's a very easy thing to produce,

but awfully hard to uncover.

And the denied version
never sounds as cool as the lie, right?

It's less spectacular.

I'll give you an example

of a job that took ten days to complete.

We reached a stage of the campaign

where content, images,
and videos started circulating

because, in fact, information
that circulates in the form of rumors

has many formats.

It can circulate as a GIF, meme,
photo, audio, video, or text,

even a massive text.

We started to see lots of content

questioning the reliability
of Brazilian voting machines.

I don't know if you remember that.

We saw this was going viral,
so we decided to investigate.

But investigating this was difficult

because there were a lot
of contradictory studies.

Summarizing the investigation,
so you can have an idea

how much work is involved
checking information,

this investigation took over a week,

involved a dozen journalists,

and generated 40 pages of reports

before we were sure

that we could authenticate
and publish that, yes,

Brazilian voting machines were reliable,

according to the best international
peer-reviewed studies

and, also, from feedback about use
of the same machines in other countries.

But this was one example;
there were many more.

And then, I learned a little ...
I learned a lot, actually,

about information pollution.

But I also learned
how we all, including you,

have to be responsible
when we publish things.

Because, what did the Internet do?

It democratized access
to publications and to information.

But this democracy, also,
brought a responsibility

regarding what we'll consume
and what we'll share.

It works something like this:

when you go to a grocery store

to buy food,

you want to know the origin of the food,

you want to know where it comes from,

you want to know if it is still
within the expiration period,

if it has a certified origin,

and that it isn't spoiled, right?

So when we think about information,
it's the same thing.

We must ask ourselves:

"Who sent me that?

What was their intention?

Is there other similar content?"

And we keep thinking, and thinking,

and, after all this experience

trying to help the media
and the journalists

check on this information,

I came up with three recommendations
that you can use to protect yourselves

and to spread and share
information responsibly.

This is what we need
to have a healthy informational diet

and a healthy society.

So first,

if someone sent you a WhatsApp message
where it's written "Forwarded" on top,

this means that your friend,
your relative, your aunt, or your grandpa

passed along this content to you.

They didn't write or produce it.

Someone sent it to them,
and they are only forwarding it on to you.

So, when you see "Forwarded,"
reflect upon it.

The second thing is,

who is the author of the content
you see on your social media,

or that came to you
through a message system?

Did someone sign it?

Did someone take responsibility
for that information?

Is someone paying for that information?

Who is this person?

And the third one is,

that message you received,

is it really "over the top"?

Does it come with a lot
of exclamation points,

with questions,
and does it say it's urgent?

"Please spread this!"

"Please forward!"

"Please, share!"

If so, be suspicious.

The best way to check information

is to use a search engine.

If it's fake content,

it's possible that many people
have already uncovered it.

This reminds me of another phenomenon

that's very recurrent,
nowadays, on the Internet,

and that's the zombie rumors.

It works like this:

photos, images and videos vanish
and then reappear, like zombies.

For example, you take a photo
of a demonstration from five years ago,

make a new post,
and alter the date and location.

So, it's true, that photo
is from some demonstration somewhere,

but it's not from the demonstration
that occurred just days ago,

or the day you were there.

So, this is very common.

Increasingly, technology will sophisticate
the possibility to alter contents,

including videos.

Even changing what people are saying
through lip manipulation,

which are what people call "deepfakes."

So, we have to be alert
about the information we're consuming,

try to check if the source is reliable,

and trust in going to the web to check.

Today, there are many basic,
simple pieces of software

for you to do a reverse search
when researching photos and videos.

You can detect and discover quickly

if they are real or not.

So, it's like this:

in the same way we concern ourselves
with our everyday nourishment

and that we want to eat
a wide variety of healthy food,

we also need to have a wide range
of information that we choose

and doesn't come to us

by the grace of our phone's data package,
of our mobile operator,

that we'll research and try to compare
our information with other ideas

and other contents,

so we can make our own
daily decisions as citizens.

And that's all.

Happy informational dieting to everyone.

Thank you.

(Applause)