I know that an angel loses her wings once writers choose to quote themselves publicly, but hopefully the sacrifice will be worth it (apologies in advance to my angel friends 🙏🏾):
In my book Civil Unity: The Radical Path to Transform Our Discourse, Our Lives and Our World, I wrote the following:
“When people believe information that is factually inaccurate, it can accelerate the erosion of trust in our fellow humans, deepen existing divisions in society, amplify unproductive disagreements, and inspire fear, hate, and violence—all of which makes it much harder to live in a civil world.”
I believe that statement with every fiber of my being.
That’s why for this week’s article, I want to talk about something I think is at the heart of most of our current cultural dysfunction, and annoyingly, it’s not being talked about nearly enough for my taste:
Misinformation and Disinformation.
To ensure you’re picking up what I’m throwing down this week, here are three quick definitions to keep us on the same page:
Fact: Something that is objectively true and can be verified.
Examples:
A triangle has three sides.
Light travels faster than sound.
Humans need oxygen to survive.
Even if you have a different opinion about those examples, as the saying goes, “facts don’t care about your opinions.” In other words, facts will remain true, whether we believe in them or not.
Misinformation: When false information is spread without the intent to harm or deceive others. Example: Without verifying if it’s true, you shared a rumor that your new neighbor has a criminal record (even though the rumor is completely false).
Disinformation: When false information is spread with the intent to harm and deceive others. Example: Someone using AI to create a manipulated video of you saying or doing something that you actually did not say or do.
My focus for this article will be on the last two points, because A) both are obviously awful and need to be addressed, and B) I’m really not trying to debate with anyone in the comment section that triangles actually have three sides or that humans actually need oxygen to survive (pleeeeeeeease lawd, don’t make me have to do that…🫠).
More importantly, I’m hoping to help anyone reading this to navigate the daily experience of trying to figure out what’s true in an information environment that is, more than at any previous time in human history, designed to confuse us.
We’re all swimming (or, drowning) in a constant flood of content, and some of it is true, some is partially true, some is intentionally distorted, and some is outright BS. And all of it is competing for our attention using techniques specifically engineered to bypass our critical thinking (side note: if you’re interested in a much deeper dive on this, I highly recommend checking out my aforementioned book, Civil Unity).
In an environment like this, the default human strategy is to retreat into the tribe that agrees with us and just believe whatever they believe because it feels safer. But there’s a severe cost to this: when we do this consistently, we’re no longer people who actively think. Instead, we become people who have been given views by whatever tribe we’ve chosen to hang out with.
In other words, we’re basically echoing other people’s thinking, not thinking for ourselves.
In my opinion, that kind of intellectual outsourcing is one of the most dangerous things any of us can do right now. It’s how kind people end up holding harmful beliefs, it’s how movements get hijacked, and it’s how families get torn apart.
So my friend, if you’ve been feeling exhausted, confused, or worried about your own ability to know what’s true anymore, please trust that you’re not alone.
Let’s dive into what we can do about this.
I believe that the quality of our questions will save us, and we sincerely need to ask more of them as often as possible.
This might sound counterintuitive, but what we need to question the most is the information that gets us the most fired up.
Why? Because the stuff that makes us the most angry, scared, outraged, or validated is the stuff most likely to be designed to do so.
I’m not saying that everything that makes us feel outraged or validated is fake. What I am saying that emotional intensity is what drives engagement, and engagement is the fuel that allows content (whether it’s true or not) to spread. When we’re not aware of this, we’re actively contributing to the problem that we’re trying to fix.
So, let me sum all of this up with this hot take. The things we feel most certain about when we first encounter them, are often the things where pumping the brakes would be our wisest move.
Allow me to offer two ways we can do this.
Here are three questions to ask yourself before you accept and pass along any piece of content, on or offline:
Who actually said this, and how do they know? (If the source is vague, like “I read somewhere online…”, or “my neighbor’s cousin told me…”, or “my favorite influencer said…” that’s a yellow flag.)
Who benefits from me believing this? (And yes, someone always benefits from us believing information, and then spreading it.)
Am I being asked to feel something more than I’m being asked to understand something? If the dominant takeaway is to leave you pissed off and/or terrified rather than curious and truth-seeking, it’s possible that you’re consuming content that’s specifically designed to get an emotional response from you.
These questions take maybe 90 seconds, and they inject just enough friction into our media consumption that we’ll stop being passive bystanders for whatever the algorithm is pushing in our faces each day. My advice is to run these questions habitually, especially when something feels too perfectly aligned with what you already believe.
And look y’all, I get it—critical thinking is in short supply these days. I know that most people aren’t going to pause for long enough to ask themselves the questions above. But I’m not writing these weekly articles for “most people”. I’m writing this for people like you who are here to do the hard (and uncommon) work of creating a kinder world.
And slowing the spread of mis/disinformation is a critical part of this work.
If nothing else, remember this (and admittedly, this was a tough one for me to swallow): just because a piece of content aligns with what we already believe, it doesn’t mean that it’s true.
The second strategy is a tool used by professional fact-checkers, and it’s an absolute game-changer (and, it’s simpler than most people realize).
For example, let’s say that you read an article online that confidently states that a common household item causes cancer.
Most of us, when we read an article or a social media post that’s trying claim their opinions as facts, tend to read vertically—meaning, we stay on the page and try to evaluate the credibility of the source from within the source itself. We look at how slick the article design is, whether the writing seems professional, whether it cites sources, and other surface-level investigations.
This is what we were taught in school, but unfortunately, this strategy is basically useless these days because well-designed misinformation looks identical to well-designed real information. The days of painfully-obvious, typo-riddled, scam emails from foreign princes asking for your banking information are long over. That’s why we need a strategy that’s as sophisticated as the mis/disinformation we’re facing.
Enter, lateral reading. AKA, the go-to strategy for professional fact-checkers.
Instead of staying within the article or social media post, professional fact-checkers read laterally by immediately open three or four other tabs.
They look up the source/author to see if they have credibility to speak about their claims (is this person qualified to state as fact that this household item causes cancer?). They scrutinize the “About” page or “Resources” page on their website and investigate their social media presence. They also check what other outlets say about the topic and/or the source.
Is it more work to do this? Absolutely. (And that’s why so few people do it.)
Still though, as mentioned previously, if we’re serious about creating a kinder world, the price of admission to this party is the willingness to do the uncommon work.
So here’s my suggestion, family. When you encounter a claim you’re tempted to share, open a new tab and search the claim. Then, open another and search the source. Is the source considered credible? Do they have a history of being saying and spreading questionable things? Open a third and search the underlying topic from a different angle. If the claim holds up, feel free to share it with confidence.
If it falls apart, congrats—you’ve just saved yourself from contributing to the problem we’re trying to fix.
We’re not done here, though. I still have one more strategy for you.
Hi, it’s Shola! Allow me to interrupt your reading to mention that the fastest way to grow this kindness movement is to kindly share this article with others. If you’ve found this article helpful, please share that helpfulness with others. It’s free and it only takes a second.
The third strategy is reserved for the claims that matter most.
To be abundantly clear, not every piece of content is worth the deep verification that I described in the previous section. You don’t need to “laterally read” your friend’s restaurant recommendation or your next Netflix binge, because that would be more than a little weird.
But for claims that have actual real-life consequences about health, about policy, about safety, about other groups of people, or about our own life decisions, it makes sense to lock-in on a much higher standard before forming a confident opinion.
That’s where cross-referencing comes in.
For example, let’s say that you run across a claim online that says that there is an uprising of people actively abducting pets, killing them, and then barbecuing them over an open fire for their nightly dinner. Instead of freaking out and immediately sharing the horrible news on your feed in hopes of warning your friends and family to protect their beloved furry companions…please, for the love of all things kind and positive, PAUSE.
Ideally, before believing this claim as fact, I’d advise holding off on that until you’ve seen it confirmed by at least three independent sources (and yes, the “independent” part is critical). Three sources from the same political ecosystem, the same business interest, or the same ideological camp are NOT three sources.
They’re basically one source repeating itself.
If a claim survives across that cross-referencing test, the chance it’s true is dramatically higher, which is what we’re going for.
Please know that I’m not naive. Again, I get it—this standard is an extremely high bar these days. The good news is that we don’t have to apply it to every claim…only the ones that will actually affect our important decisions.
For example:
Cross-reference the medical decision you’re about to make.
Cross-reference the political position you’re forming.
Cross-reference the reputation-affecting claim about another person you’re about to repeat.
For these, the small cost of verification is much smaller than the cost of being wrong.
Being wrong (and even worse, spreading your “wrongness” with others) can damage your relationships, your health, your reputation, and your sense of yourself as a thoughtful person. Hopefully we agree that a few minutes of verification is a fairly reasonable price to pay to avoid those outcomes.
I’ll take it a step further:
The fight against misinformation is both a fight for accuracy and a fight for the integrity of our own minds. When we let ourselves be led by whatever the loudest voices are pushing, we lose the experience of being people who actually know what we think and why. Which means, we become a puppet of other people’s narratives, instead of the authors of our own. There is too much at stake to let that happen.
In a sense, strategic questioning, lateral reading, and cross-referencing are forms of self-respect. It’s how we remain actively thinking human beings in an environment that would be thrilled if we didn’t behave like one.
Bottom line, the kinder world we’re trying to build requires people who can see clearly, and misinformation and disinformation are the enemies to that clarity.
As mentioned, the bar is high, y’all.
Can you refuse to spread lies even when the lies align with your tribe?
Can you update your beliefs when the evidence demands it?
Can you take the necessary time to verify the truth before immediately believing it?
If you said “yes” to all three questions, thank you for being one of those people. As we both know, the world has no shortage of people spreading lies. More than ever, it desperately needs more people willing to outsmart them. ❤️
Ubuntu,
Shola aka Brother Teresa
It’s free, it’s fast, and most of all, it tells me you value this work and that I should keep writing every week in pursuit of a kinder world. Just tap on the “❤️ LIKE” button below!
Have you ever shared something that turned out to be wrong? What did that experience teach you about your own information habits? Drop it in the comments! We’ve all done it (myself, definitely included).
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