How not to become a victim of fakes, information manipulations

In modern conditions, most people find themselves in an environment of information abundance. This is largely due to the increased availability of the Internet. We can connect to the network from personal computers, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, receiving literally every second a huge number of messages, news materials, memes, notifications. Moreover, people have even stopped noticing how unrealistic the volumes of data they process daily. You only have to look at social networks a couple of times a day to get a lot of topics for discussion for the near future. But few of us think about whether the information we read or saw corresponds to reality? How true is it? What impact can it have on our views, thinking, actions?

And here we are faced with a problem that has remained relevant for quite a long period of time. Surely many of you have already guessed that we are talking about fakes on the Internet. But today, information manipulations on the Internet have reached a new level, have acquired completely different proportions. And this is already a real reason to think about potential risks and dangers. The main difficulty is that fakes on the Internet are becoming increasingly difficult to identify. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish truth from lies in various publications on the Internet, including for people who have common sense and are quite well versed in this or that issue. And if we take into account the fact that fakes cover absolutely all spheres and niches, spread at an incredible speed, then the question naturally arises about how not to fall for such tricks.

Our review today will be devoted to the topic of deception on the Internet. In particular, we will talk about the changes that the technology of online lies has undergone. We will get acquainted with the methods that will help you check the veracity of information before you take it at face value. We will talk a little about psychology itself and why we fall for fakes and how to protect the most vulnerable categories of users, namely children and the elderly. We will provide a number of recommendations, practical advice, introduce tools that will allow you to independently identify lies on the Internet and minimize your own risks. Of course, today there is already a certain responsibility for fakes on the Internet, but you can’t expect much from this yet. Therefore, each of you should think personally about your own security when working online, not only from a technical point of view, but also from a psycho-emotional one.

Perhaps you will also be interested in such a question as password phrase in ensuring the security of your Internet connection.

What do modern fakes look like?

If not so long ago the Internet was massively filled with the results of using primitive Photoshop, and even inexperienced users could easily identify many publications as yellow press, today the situation has undergone dramatic changes. Now you will almost never find amateur fakes on the Internet that are visible at first glance. Fakes on the Internet have become a kind of industry, in which professionals actively work.

Before launching a particular deception to the masses, the psychology of the audience is studied, a portrait of, so to speak, the "victim" is formed. To implement such an idea, advanced technologies and tools are used. This is what ultimately allows us to launch such strategies that are impossible to detect without special training, knowledge, and skills. Truth and lies on the Internet are so intertwined that even experienced users who are well versed in the subject matter fall for the bait of scammers.

So, today lies on the Internet are formed on the basis of the following tools:

1. Synthetic media.
2. Influencing the emotions of the audience.
3. Launching a personalized deception.

To understand how this works, let's look at each point in more detail.

Using synthetic media

If we talk directly about information manipulations, then the leading positions in this niche today are occupied by deepfakes. Artificial intelligence technologies are actively used to implement such ideas. Thanks to it, you can easily create a video in which absolutely anyone will say what the author wanted. The resulting videos will be of such high quality that it will be possible to identify lies and manipulation in all this only by using special equipment. By the way, today virtual bloggers are gaining popularity. They are completely generated by neural networks, but so realistic that few users will notice it — most people perceive them as real opinion leaders.

Let's not say that all the deepfakes we see on the Internet today are perfect craftsmanship, but they still exist, and in sufficient quantity. Advanced modern equipment, high-powered computers are used to create them, and a lot of time is spent. But you can still notice a deepfake yourself if you pay more attention to the details, namely:

• Eyes. In an unnatural video, a person's eyes may look unnatural. It seems that he is looking in the wrong direction.
• Incorrect display of emotions. A real person will always accompany his speech with facial expressions and movements during a dialogue or monologue. This becomes especially obvious at the moment of changing emotions.
• Lighting and shadows on the face. If you look closely, you can see that the angle and direction of the light beam in the fake video do not match the shadow being formed or the surrounding environment as a whole.

Deepfakes are where truth and lies are closely intertwined on the Internet, where any video that is inconvenient for someone can be classified as a fake, and artificially created materials can be presented as real. And all this is only gaining momentum in terms of popularity.

Impact on the emotions of the audience

If you analyze all these fakes on the Internet that exist today, you can see that most of them work precisely because they evoke strong emotions in the audience. And it does not matter whether we are talking about laughter, delight, anger, indignation, fear. The whole point is that after viewing such content, people have a desire to leave their comments, forward them to friends and acquaintances. Why does it work? It's very simple: emotions, both positive and negative, always throw a person off balance. He loses the ability to reason logically, critically assess the situation and make quite reasonable, logical conclusions. That is, at the moment of laughter, fear, our brain works instantly, removing even the slightest attempts to assess the situation, to reflect on it.

That is why content that provokes emotions is very difficult to identify. But, as in the previous point, there are moments that will indicate a lie on the Internet. In particular, here are the main aspects:

• Emphasis on the title. Often, the titles of fake materials contain exclamation marks, phrases such as “this is real”, “this is what they are hiding from you”, “shock”, “unreal truth”, “already now” etc.
• Too bright, contrasting images. They are made to attract attention, to stand out against the background of other publications that are distinguished by their conciseness and harmony. And even if such images have no relation to the immediate content, they will still attract attention.
• Creating an effect of urgency. Surely you have already come across fakes on the Internet with the headlines “The last 12 hours”, “Look before it is deleted”, “Share while you can”. The authors of such materials rely on intriguing the user, not giving him the opportunity to think, reason, draw his own conclusions about the advisability of such actions. If you do not act as quickly as possible, the person will understand that they are lying, deceiving, and will not even think of distributing the publication.

Launching a personalized deception

Modern social network algorithms, which in many ways also began to use artificial intelligence technology, have learned to create individual realities for each visitor. Surely you have noticed that the selection of publications corresponds specifically to your interests. The feed will display not only your subscriptions, but also everything that interested you before. To understand the preferences of the audience, the algorithms study the viewed publications, posts under which you liked or left a comment. The social circle is necessarily analyzed. That is, this is how a feed is formed that will draw you in, make you spend as much time as possible on the social network and not scroll through publications.

On the one hand, this is really convenient for the user himself, since he does not have to waste time searching for interesting material and scroll through what is absolutely irrelevant. But at the same time, each user is literally immersed in a closed environment in which he will receive exclusively filtered information. All those profiles that will be in his selection will be devoted to approximately the same topic. There will be no alternative, no other reality.

It is precisely this closed environment that becomes the ideal solution for spreading deception on the Internet. People believe even questionable materials, actively share them, considering them something new, interesting, something that has not been discussed before. At the same time, they do not see an alternative, no other reality, because search engines automatically exclude all this.

Checking the information for authenticity

Fact-checking, that is, fact-checking, which literally translated from English sounds like fact checking - is a whole range of procedures aimed at checking the factual accuracy of messages and statements that raise doubts during initial acquaintance. Here it will not be enough to simply go online and search for other materials on a given topic, compare them with a publication that looks fake. Fact-checking is carried out by people who are well versed in this issue, understand how the modern information ecosystem is structured and works. The upcoming work will consist of 2 main stages:

1. Visual verification.
2. Checking several sources.

Let's get acquainted with the specifics of the upcoming work in more detail.

Visual verification of content

If you analyze all those fakes on the Internet that are launched today, you can see that the vast majority of them are the use of real photographs of famous people who have shaken society, but with false statements. Surely you have already seen photos of famous doctors who literally advertise various miracle cures, actors, other celebrities and false information about their lives, health, etc.

You can easily identify such lies on the Internet using reverse image search technology. Today, they are developing extremely actively. One of the most striking examples here is Google Images. With the help of this service, you can see other sources of use of this photo. If the signature or description in most of the found photos turns out to be different and has no relation to the one you initially saw, then with a high degree of probability you can say that you are looking at a fake.

Yandex.Images and TinEye services also work in a similar way to Google Images. But in parallel with this, you can find many more advanced solutions. In particular, those that focus on metadata. Here you can find information about the time the document was created, about what devices were used during the shooting. Metadata can also often contain geolocation information. And if you carefully analyze all this, then it is quite easy to identify discrepancies, thereby making sure that the information provided is false. But we still do not recommend relying entirely on metadata, since modern Internet scammers have already learned to easily replace this information, writing in it the data they need for themselves. Therefore, it is in your interests to use both services for searching for original images and familiarization with their descriptions.

Checking multiple sources

If you are familiar with the principles of journalism, you probably know that one of the unspoken rules that these specialists follow involves studying at least 2 independent sources in order to confirm or, conversely, refute certain information. But today, when Internet technologies are developing extremely actively, this rule had to be adjusted somewhat. In particular, the number of sources for confirmation was increased to 4.

But here we want to draw your attention to one nuance: we are talking directly about independent publications. This does not mean that you need to find the same image, news, information on different sites. The very essence is to find information on different types of platforms. As an option, these can be private publications or state media, expert sites. If we talk about classification by location, these can be international, national or local platforms. If the topic is quite sensitive, if it relates to sensitive topics, such as finance, politics, health, welfare, then it is worth studying sites related to different structures. Alternatively, a question on the topic of health should be studied on the sites of several medical centers, on specialized forums or even on Wikipedia.

It is important to pay attention to where exactly all the publications you find are linked. There is a possibility that they all have the same primary source. This means that the information will be identical and clearly biased. That is, you will need to find something else and only then perform the check. Do not forget to also pay attention to the time of publication of the content. If you see that the same material appears on different platforms at about the same time, then with a high degree of probability this will be a coordinated idea. Practice shows that real news for the most part appears on the network in waves. Initially, one publication will publish them, and then the next one will pick them up, etc.

Why do we succumb to fakes?

We can talk about the capabilities of the human mind forever, especially if we start analyzing a long period, literally from primitive people to the present day. And if in those days mechanisms worked that helped people survive in the wild, changing seasons, then today, when we live in a very saturated information environment, our thinking can play a cruel joke. Judge for yourself:

1. Emphasis on comfort. Practice shows that people always perceive more positively the information that corresponds to their beliefs, interests, preferences. If we encounter something that contradicts the picture of the world that has formed in our heads, then with a high degree of probability we will not perceive it, even if we are talking about truthful data. It is on this mechanism that those who create and launch fakes on the Internet rely. They spend their strength and energy on convincing the audience, initially saying what people want to hear. As a result, fans of healthy eating read materials that tell them about the harm of fats, those who are sure of the dangers of vaccinations receive information confirming their rightness. That is, each segment of the audience gets its share of carefully thought-out lies, deception on the Internet. And the main problem here is that it is extremely difficult to fight this. People who are sure of their rightness often think too narrowly, do not pay attention to third-party aspects and do not even try to expand their point of view. If you do not want to be among those to whom information manipulations are applied, try to look at the issue from a different point of view, assume the possibility that you may be wrong. Then you will be able to notice the quality of the evidence and, perhaps, change your mind.
2. The deja vu effect. Another feature of the human brain is that information that catches the eye with a certain frequency seems plausible over time. This is why many fakes on the Internet are extremely tenacious. They firmly enter the consciousness of the audience and it becomes extremely difficult to convince people of their erroneousness. In addition, refutations of fakes are published extremely rarely. But if you analyze all these materials in more detail, if you pay attention to where they come from, you can often identify the same original source. And even if this material turns out to be unreliable, erroneous, then its regular publication on the Internet, its constant presence in front of the audience will convince people of its veracity.
3. Distorted idea of public opinion. If you analyze publications on social networks, you can quite easily notice a rather intrusive distortion of information. We talked about the fact that the sites show us exactly the content that we were interested in earlier, left our comments, likes, reposted. As a result, the audience forms the opinion that all other visitors to the feed share your opinion. It will be very easy to ensure such an effect in modern conditions, when knowledgeable people have armies of bots and even large coordinated groups of activists at their disposal. As a result, information will be widely disseminated, and what literally yesterday no one heard about will now be on everyone's lips.

It turns out that we deceive ourselves, mislead ourselves and do not even want to think about reality if it turns out to be uncomfortable for us. This is a kind of defense mechanism of our brain, and unscrupulous individuals who deliberately spread lies on the Internet actively use this.

The most vulnerable groups for information manipulation

Of course, absolutely anyone can fall for fakes on the Internet, including those who have common sense and certain knowledge in this area. This can happen for various reasons, be it a moment of inattention, too quick a reaction, or regular imposition of a certain idea, which we discussed above. But still, we can separately identify high-risk groups, that is, those who really are too actively led by lies on the Internet. In particular, we are talking about:

1. Children, teenagers.
2. Older people.

We will talk about how to protect such users further.

Fake news on the Internet and children

Due to their little life experience, preschoolers and young school-age children mostly perceive the information they receive as something true. They do not see the difference between ordinary and advertising content, bright pictures attract more attention than black and white or the same text. In addition, they very often perceive wishful thinking as reality. But if you forbid something to small children, it will have the opposite effect: they will simply continue to interact with fake content, including to spite adults. The only way to convince them is to explain the fallacy of the opinions expressed, to show that not everything published on the Internet will be true.

It will be much more difficult to teach teenagers to recognize truth and lies on the Internet. They are already striving for independence, they believe the information that corresponds to their worldview or, on the contrary, contradicts what their parents and teachers say. They are more likely to believe their peers than adults. And no bans will solve such a problem. Here, too, a consistent dialogue is needed, filled with facts, and not speculations that will be based on your personal opinion.

Alternatively, you can teach your child to identify fraud on the Internet by clearly demonstrating how manipulations work. Alternatively, you can watch your favorite shows together, walk through the feed on social networks, giving visual arguments that this or that information is false. Moreover, you can ask your child to launch his own fake as an experiment. When he sees how everything works in practice, he will believe in the truthfulness of your opinion and learn to quickly recognize the manipulations of other Internet users.

It would also be useful to compare how the same event, activity is covered by different sources, adding here also authoritative, expert ones, that is, those whose reliability you are completely confident in.

And, of course, in no case should you forget about technical limitations. No one has canceled parental control, within which you can automatically block questionable resources. You can also use family settings in YouTube and Google to filter out inappropriate content. But you can also use a good ad blocker, because in parallel with their main responsibilities, they will also prevent connections to questionable sites. But in any case, the best results are achieved by building a trusting relationship with children. It is in your interests to ensure that when questions arise, they turn to you as the primary source, and do not run to questionable sites on the network.

Fake news on the Internet and older people

It is much more difficult for an older person to prove their own rightness and lies in information than for a child or teenager. People who have lived a long life have their own views on many issues. They are mostly far from modern technologies, do not understand how everything is arranged, works. They do not know that it is easy to create a clone of a popular site and launch dubious information on it. They do not understand that many reviews turn out to be custom-made, that is, have no relation to real user responses. That is why they very often take lies on the Internet at face value, and convincing them otherwise is a real quest.

And here it is important to refuse excessive pressure, condemnation. Just try to accustom them to sharing with you any information that is important, in their opinion, so that they do not make serious decisions on their own, especially if they can affect their health, financial well-being. We must not forget that natural changes that occur in the human brain with age also negatively affect the perception of information, do not allow a more critical look at certain issues.

In practice, soft persuasion works best. You don't need to directly accuse older people of being overly gullible or claim that certain sites or bloggers are dishonest and manipulate the opinions of gullible people. Don't make loud comments, but try to refute the information that older people find credible as calmly and thoughtfully as possible. Perhaps your objective facts will really convince them. If you manage to achieve the desired result at least once, then in the future your elderly relatives will be more attentive to information on the Internet or at least will turn to you for clarification or approval.

Checking the facts: TOP available tools

Along with extreme caution and attention to the information presented on the Internet, modern users can also use specialized tools in practice. With their help, you can check the data and determine what is in front of you: truth or falsehood. To use such tools, you do not need to have special knowledge or skills. In particular, you can use:

1. Specialized platforms. Today, there are many solutions on the Internet that will help you check specific information and make sure it is reliable. Thus, such international platforms as Snopes, which has been operating on the market for over 30 years and checks viral stories, and FactCheck, which has proven itself excellent in checking political statements, are in high demand among specialists today. An interesting option is PolitiFact, which uses a fairly original system of evaluation from absolute truth to outright lies with additional breakdown into intermediate segments. But if you are looking for maximum objectivity in assessing information, then you should pay attention to Full Fact.
2. Automated solutions. Here we are talking about using browser extensions that will initially warn the user about questionable sites and the information presented on them. In some cases, the reliability rating of sources can be displayed here, thanks to which you can initially understand whether you can trust this site. We also talked about the possibility of using ad blockers, which will not only speed up page loading, but also reduce the amount of fake content. If you want to check the reliability of information on news sites, then use the NewsGuardу tool, while Media Bias/Fact Check will help you verify the quality of political information.

But still, in parallel with the use of specialized platforms and automated solutions, you will never lose your vigilance. This is what will allow you to easily identify fakes on the Internet and not succumb to false information.

Additional recommendations that will increase your resistance to disinformation on the Internet

We will repeat once again that today we live in an extremely saturated information environment. This is what often leads to a decrease in concentration, blurs the boundaries between truth and fiction, and even absolute lies. But in order to ensure increased resistance to fake information, minimize the risks and dangers of consuming unreliable content, use additional recommendations:

• Approach information consumption wisely. In some cases, an excess of news can be much worse than insufficient information. Often, users become dependent on content consumption, which ultimately reduces the quality of the analysis of the materials presented, increases susceptibility to fakes. Make it a rule to study a certain number of news reports daily. In most cases, 2-3 selections will be enough to stay up to date with current trends, but not to plunge into information garbage. It is also important to stick to a variety of sources, check where such information comes from, study the alternative.
• Teach social networks and other platforms to show you only high-quality material. We have already mentioned that platform algorithms regularly track user actions, identify audience interest and adjust the feed to them. If you initially start subscribing to high-quality publications, if you pass by questionable profiles or mark low-quality content as “not interesting”, “hide”, then over time your feed will be filled with only reliable and trustworthy publications. That is, all that is required of you is to respond positively to useful materials and immediately block the display of questionable ones. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that writing angry comments under obvious fakes will also be perceived by the system as interest. Therefore, it is important for you to ignore them, and not to express your own negative opinion.
• Bet on expert materials. Unfortunately, today attacks on authoritative medical, scientific, educational centers have become the norm. For many users, the opinion of their favorite blogger is much more important than what a person with many years of experience in this field says. And this is largely the problem of the abundance of information around us. This significantly complicates the identification of real competence and bright phrases, the abundance of publications. Therefore, we recommend that you initially choose truly authoritative platforms for yourself. Those whose content you have already managed to verify and then interact with them, and not take risks when interacting with questionable materials.
• Avoid parallel reality. All those algorithms that we have already talked about today, although they simplify user interactions with content, but at the same time narrow a person's worldview too much in the end. That is, different versions of reality appear: the same events are interpreted completely differently. And here it is no longer possible to come to a common denominator, since the basic facts, in essence, turn out to be completely different. Again, this can only be avoided by interacting with proven platforms, as well as connecting common sense to the processing of information read or seen.
• Don't jump to conclusions and take drastic actions. This is especially true for financial transactions, including when interacting with the cryptocurrency market. This is something that is currently subject to excessive influence of rumors. Prices for cryptographic currencies can soar to sky-high figures and then fall below the baseboard just because one person starts a rumor, and another supports it and spreads it further. In the same way, fake news can instantly collapse the shares of large corporations. Therefore, before making any financial transaction, especially in high-risk areas, think twice, or even three times.

By following these recommendations, you will significantly increase your resistance to fakes on the Internet, and ensure increased immunity to information manipulation.

What to expect from information instability in the foreseeable future?

For quite a long period of time, there has been an active struggle between those who launch fakes on the Internet and those who are actively fighting them. As soon as a new security solution appears, ways to bypass it are immediately sought. As a result, the methods of deception are becoming more diverse and expanded and, unfortunately, effective. To withstand all this and not fall for information manipulation, it is worth using the following solutions:

1. Artificial intelligence. We would like to draw attention to the fact that this technology is a fairly advanced weapon, and in the hands of both sides. With the help of neural networks, extremely convincing and credible at first glance deepfakes are created today. In parallel with this, machine learning is actively used to identify deception on the network. It is convenient that most of these solutions work automatically, analyzing the corresponding patterns, logic in texts, technical indicators of media files. But here it is important to understand that the level of escalation of such a problem will gradually increase, and AI solutions will become more sophisticated and technological.
2. Media literacy. This is something that absolutely any Internet user should understand, from a child to an elderly person. It is important to understand how recommendation algorithms work, what information about you is collected by sites, what data should definitely be hidden from the network and much more. Only with this knowledge will you be able to withstand the saturated information space and not succumb to fakes. That is, relying solely on technical solutions in the fight against lies on the Internet is clearly not worth it. The main bet should still be on yourself and your own awareness.
3. Stick to the optimal balance between freedom of work on the network and security. Despite all the measures that are used today to combat deepfakes, countering disinformation is still far from ideal. Therefore, it is important to maintain a clear line between censorship and protection from manipulation. Here you can use automatic moderation to block inappropriate content, but you still should not rely entirely on technological solutions.

Unfortunately, today there is no single solution to such a problem as fakes on the Internet. You will not be able to provide your own protection only with technical means. Do not forget that common sense and lack of haste are the best way to avoid fraud. this is what will allow you to filter information and use only verified data.

Summing up

We hope that all the information that we presented in today's review will allow you to take a fresh look at such issues as fakes, lies and deception on the network, as well as draw appropriate conclusions to ensure your own safety from the influence of unreliable data. But in parallel with all this, it is also important to worry about the protection of your personal computer, personal privacy when working on the Internet. This is what the use of mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service guarantees. Moreover, with their help you can bypass regional blocking, access any sites from different countries of the world, easily connect the automation of routine and similar work, you can launch multi-accounting for effective business promotion in social networks and more.

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