如何处理网络上的争议与虚假信息？

A guide to fighting lies, fake news, and chaos online - The Verge

打击在线谎言、假新闻和混乱的指南

A few months ago, I got angry about something on Twitter. Somebody had tweeted a photo of a paper sign in an apartment building, informing tenants that using the elevator would soon cost $35 a month. It was surprising, but on a gut level, exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect from a greedy landlord — the kind of thing that’s easy to furiously retweet without thinking.

几个月前，我对Twitter上的事情感到愤怒。有人在推特上发布了一张公寓楼里纸质标志的照片，告知租户使用电梯很快就会花费每月35美元。这很令人惊讶，但从直觉的角度来看，这正是我期望从贪婪的房东那里得到的那种行为——那种很容易不假思索地疯狂转发的事情。

But a little digging showed that the photo was uploaded to Reddit back in 2013, and the post’s author said the signs were quickly taken down. The building manager denied writing them to both the author and a reporter, suggesting that this was either a prank or an immediately abandoned plan. Retweeting the photo would have just outraged people about something that had seemingly never happened.

但经过一番挖掘，发现这张照片早在2013年就被上传到Reddit，帖子的作者说，这些标志很快就被撤下了。大楼经理否认写信给提交人和记者，暗示这要么是恶作剧，要么是立即放弃的计划。转发这张照片只会让人们对似乎从未发生过的事情感到愤怒。

This kind of viral half-truth is part of the fabric of today’s internet, and the kind of anger it inspired has been turned into a dangerous commodity. It’s cynically exploited by businesses for ad-supported “fake news,” by scammers raising money online, and by authoritarian governments to spread hate and fear.

这种病毒式的半真半假是当今互联网结构的一部分，它所激发的那种愤怒已经变成了一种危险的商品。它被企业玩世不恭地利用广告支持的"假新闻"，被骗子在网上筹集资金，被威权政府用来传播仇恨和恐惧。

I don’t want to blame people who fall for these tricks. A lot of the problems are exacerbated by companies, governments, and other factors that individuals can’t control. But the internet is full of grifters, tricksters, and outright liars who rely on people’s basic trust to amplify their message. It’s worth slowing down and carefully navigating their traps — to avoid spreading an alarming false rumor, getting angry at a group of people for something they didn’t do, or perpetuating an honest misunderstanding.

我不想责怪那些为这些伎俩而堕落的人。公司、政府和其他个人无法控制的因素加剧了许多问题。但互联网上到处都是骗子、骗子和彻头彻尾的骗子，他们依靠人们的基本信任来放大他们的信息。值得放慢脚步，小心翼翼地避开他们的陷阱——避免散布令人震惊的虚假谣言，避免因为一群人没有做的事情而生气，或者让诚实的误解永久化。

And as a person who does care deeply about putting true things online, I know I’ve personally misunderstood stories because I didn’t think to look more closely, and not always because somebody was deliberately fooling me. It took me years to really understand where all the information I saw online was coming from. So this isn’t just a guide to spotting when something is fake. It’s a system for slowing down and thinking about information — whether that information is true, false, or something in between.

作为一个非常关心把真实的东西放到网上的人，我知道我个人误解了故事，因为我没有想过要更仔细地看，而且并不总是因为有人故意愚弄我。我花了好几年的时间才真正理解我在网上看到的所有信息来自哪里。因此，这不仅仅是发现某些东西是假的指南。这是一个放慢脚步并思考信息的系统 - 无论这些信息是真的，假的，还是介于两者之间的东西。

STEP ONE: WHEN TO BE WORRIED 第一步：何时担心

It’s hard to be vigilant all the time, but there are a few red flags that indicate something might be misleading.

很难一直保持警惕，但有一些危险信号表明某些事情可能会产生误导。

The first step is honing your sense of when a given piece of content is too good (or bad) to be true. Once you start looking, you’ll notice specific subtypes of this content — like ragebait designed to get traffic from people’s anger, hyperpartisan appeals that twist the facts, or outright scams. The techniques are relatively common across different types of story, and they’re not hard to recognize.

第一步是磨练你对给定内容何时好（或坏）的感觉。一旦你开始寻找，你就会注意到这些内容的特定子类型——比如旨在从人们的愤怒中获取流量的狂暴诱饵，扭曲事实的超党派诉求，或者彻头彻尾的骗局。这些技术在不同类型的故事中相对常见，而且不难识别。

Outside these specific cases, the general technique is almost stupidly simple: if a story grabs your attention for any reason, slow down and look closer.

在这些特定案例之外，一般的技巧几乎是愚蠢的简单：如果一个故事出于任何原因吸引了你的注意力，那就放慢脚步，仔细观察。

FIRSTHAND SOURCES 第一手资料来源

Even if you don’t trust a particular outlet, you can often use their reporting to work back to primary sources, which you can use to fact-check what the outlet is saying or cast it in a different light. Here are some particular sources to look for:

即使您不信任某个特定的媒体，您通常也可以使用他们的报告来返回主要来源，您可以使用这些来源来事实检查媒体在说什么，或者将其置于不同的角度。以下是一些需要寻找的特定来源：

Stories involving specific crimes are often drawn directly from legal filings, which are usually publicly available. You can often find the original documents as links in the article, or uploaded to third-party sites like Scribd, DocumentCloud, or CourtListener. Many of the filings only show allegations, but they’re a reliable picture of what the authorities think is happening in a particular case.

涉及具体犯罪的故事通常直接来自法律文件，这些文件通常是公开的。您通常可以在文章中找到原始文档作为链接，或上传到第三方网站，如 Scribd，DocumentCloud 或 CourtListener。许多文件只显示了指控，但它们是当局认为在特定案件中发生的事情的可靠图片。

INTERVIEWS AND DIRECT QUOTES 采访和直接报价

Firsthand interviews are a core element of journalism. When possible, news outlets will print a person’s real name and quote them directly, and since most reputable journalists won’t risk their job by fabricating a quote or a source wholesale, those quotes are usually reliable. Outlets will generally only withhold names if identifying a person would endanger them, or put them in legal jeopardy.

第一手采访是新闻业的核心要素。如果可能的话，新闻媒体会打印一个人的真实姓名并直接引用他们，并且由于大多数有信誉的记者不会冒着工作风险伪造报价或批发来源，因此这些报价通常是可靠的。商店通常只会在识别某人会危及他们或使他们处于法律危险之中时才会隐瞒姓名。

LEAKED DOCUMENTS 泄露的文件

Some of the most important stories in journalism come from leaked documents, which can reveal corporate wrongdoing or governmental misconduct. But less established outlets sometimes exaggerate what a particular video or document means, using original material as a license to make outlandish claims. It’s often useful to check the document to make sure it supports the article’s claims.

新闻业中一些最重要的故事来自泄露的文件，这些文件可以揭示公司的不法行为或政府的不当行为。但不太成熟的媒体有时会夸大特定视频或文件的含义，使用原始材料作为许可，提出古怪的主张。检查文档以确保它支持文章的声明通常很有用。

A PRESS RELEASE 新闻发布

Companies often exaggerate to make themselves look good, but if you want to confirm that a particular event or announcement really happened, a press release is a good way to make sure. You can find many of these statements on company and government agency websites, official social media accounts, and dedicated sites like PR Newswire.

公司经常夸大其词，让自己看起来不错，但如果你想确认某个特定事件或公告是否真的发生过，新闻稿是确保的好方法。您可以在公司和政府机构网站，官方社交媒体帐户以及美通社等专用网站上找到许多此类声明。

Once you’ve decided to look more deeply at a story online, it’s time to figure out where and when it comes from. Internet news can work like a game of telephone: every time somebody reposts or rewrites something, there’s a chance that important details will get lost.

一旦你决定更深入地研究一个在线故事，就该弄清楚它来自哪里以及何时了。互联网新闻可以像电话游戏一样工作：每当有人转发或重写某些内容时，都有可能丢失重要细节。

The first step in that process is finding the date of the original story — which is one of the most helpful pieces of information you can get. If the story’s being shared in a Facebook post or a tweet, click on the post and find its date, otherwise known as the timestamp. You should also look for the source of the relevant information. Sometimes a news story will explicitly cite its sources, whether that’s by making clear that the author performed firsthand research and interviews, or by linking to a press release or another news outlet. If it’s the latter, just click through to see where the information is coming from, and make sure to check the timestamp on that as well.

这个过程的第一步是找到原始故事的日期 - 这是你能得到的最有用的信息之一。如果故事在Facebook帖子或推文中分享，请单击帖子并找到其日期，也称为时间戳。您还应该寻找相关信息的来源。有时，一个新闻报道会明确引用其来源，无论是通过明确作者进行了第一手研究和采访，还是通过链接到新闻稿或其他新闻媒体。如果是后者，只需单击以查看信息的来源，并确保也检查其时间戳。

Sometimes, though, it’s unclear where news originated — a story might print an inflammatory quote without saying where or when it’s from, or a Twitter account might share a photo with a description that might be wrong. In those cases, do a quick search for more coverage and original sourcing, generally using a search engine like Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Google.

然而，有时候，人们并不清楚新闻的来源——一个故事可能会打印出一句煽动性的话，而没有说明它来自哪里或什么时候，或者Twitter帐户可能会分享一张照片，其中的描述可能是错误的。在这些情况下，请快速搜索更多报道和原始来源，通常使用Bing，DuckDuckGo或Google等搜索引擎。

WHY TIMESTAMPS MATTER 为什么时间戳很重要

There’s a term called “context collapse” that’s very useful when discussing internet news. Popularized by scholar danah boyd, it describes how the internet “flattens multiple audiences into one” — if you’re browsing Twitter, for example, an offhand comment from your friend sits right alongside a statement from the president of the United States. Internet news suffers from its own variation of context collapse: no matter how far away or long ago a story happened, it can sound like it’s happening right now, in your neighborhood.

有一个术语叫做"上下文崩溃"，在讨论互联网新闻时非常有用。由学者丹娜·博伊德（Danah Boyd）推广，它描述了互联网如何"将多个受众扁平化为一个"——例如，如果你正在浏览Twitter，你朋友的一句不经意的评论就与美国总统的声明放在一起。互联网新闻遭受了自身背景崩溃的变化：无论一个故事发生在多远或多远的地方，它听起来都像是现在发生在你的社区。

This can go horribly awry. In January 2019, a local TV station said law enforcement was looking for a human trafficking suspect around Waco, Texas. A radio station employee summarized the story with a more urgent headline — “Suspected Human Trafficker, Child Predator May Be in Our Area” — and posted it on Facebook.

这可能会出错。2019年1月，当地一家电视台表示，执法部门正在德克萨斯州韦科附近寻找一名人口贩运嫌疑人。一名广播电台员工用一个更紧迫的标题总结了这个故事 - “涉嫌人口贩子，儿童掠夺者可能在我们的地区” - 并将其发布在Facebook上。

The writer wanted to raise local awareness about a criminal on the loose. Instead, as Slate author Will Oremus explains, his story got out of control. It was shared hundreds of thousands of times across the country, likely by users who thought “our area” referred to their town instead of Texas. The suspect was apprehended soon after, and the article was updated. But people kept sharing the original post for weeks, because it sounded scary and urgent — apparently, too urgent to check and see if the danger was gone.

作者希望提高当地人对一个逍遥法外的罪犯的认识。相反，正如Slate作者Will Oremus所解释的那样，他的故事失控了。它在全国范围内被分享了数十万次，可能是由那些认为"我们的地区"指的是他们的城镇而不是德克萨斯州的用户分享的。嫌疑人不久后被捕，文章更新。但几周来，人们一直在分享原来的帖子，因为它听起来很可怕和紧迫——显然，太紧急了，无法检查和查看危险是否消失。

STEP THREE: HOW TO FIND THE CONTEXT 第三步：如何找到上下文

Some online disinformation is blatantly fake or misleading. But other stories are more subtly wrong. They might omit important details, blow small controversies out of proportion, or use legitimate news to attract people before feeding them bad information.

一些在线虚假信息是公然虚假或误导性的。但其他故事则更微妙地是错误的。他们可能会省略重要的细节，把小争议吹得不成比例，或者在向他们提供不良信息之前使用合法新闻来吸引人们。

The key here is looking for gaps in a story, or mismatches between a story’s claims and its actual source material. These might be honest mistakes — like accounts sharing satirical news without realizing it. Or they might be a deliberate attempt to fool people.

这里的关键是寻找故事中的差距，或者故事的主张与其实际源材料之间的不匹配。这些可能是诚实的错误 - 比如帐户在没有意识到的情况下分享讽刺性新闻。或者它们可能是故意愚弄人们的企图。

CROWDFUNDING CREDIBILITY 众筹信誉

Lots of news outlets cover cool crowdfunded products on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, or mention that a story’s subject is raising money on GoFundMe. Before you give money to these campaigns, though, you should make sure they’re not unrealistic or scammy.

许多新闻媒体在Kickstarter和Indiegogo上报道了很酷的众筹产品，或者提到一个故事的主题是在GoFundMe上筹集资金。但是，在为这些广告系列提供资金之前，您应该确保它们不是不切实际或骗局。

For product-based campaigns — like a board game, an indie movie, or a gadget — does the creator have relevant past experience? Does the funding goal seem way too low to create the product they’re describing? If they’ve raised money in a previous campaign, were the backers satisfied?

对于基于产品的广告系列（如棋盘游戏、独立电影或小工具），创作者是否具有相关的过去经验？资金目标是否看起来太低而无法创建他们所描述的产品？如果他们在之前的竞选活动中筹集了资金，支持者是否满意？

With personal campaigns, look for a connection between the campaign and the person who’s supposed to get the money — like a link in a news story or from the person’s known social media accounts. GoFundMe also offers more specific guidelines on its site.

通过个人活动，寻找竞选活动与应该获得资金的人之间的联系 - 例如新闻报道中的链接或来自该人的已知社交媒体帐户的链接。GoFundMe还在其网站上提供了更具体的指导方针。

In general, be cautious of crowdfunding projects that seem far more ambitious than mainstream products and services. If nobody — including the US government — has been able to build a giant border wall between the US and Mexico, there might be unforeseen difficulties that help explain that. And if big computing companies aren’t selling an ultra-thin, super-cheap laptop-tablet-phone hybrid, they may have realized it’s just a bad idea.

一般来说，要警惕那些似乎比主流产品和服务更雄心勃勃的众筹项目。如果没有人——包括美国政府——能够在美国和墨西哥之间建造一堵巨大的边境墙，那么可能会有不可预见的困难来帮助解释这一点。如果大型计算公司不销售超薄、超便宜的笔记本电脑-平板电脑-手机混合体，他们可能已经意识到这只是一个坏主意。

STEP FOUR: HOW TO WEIGH THE EVIDENCE 第四步：如何权衡证据

At this point, you probably understand the story you started with pretty well. You’re ready for the last, most subjective step of the process: deciding what it means. If you’ve been momentarily fooled by an Onion link or some other fake story — and seriously, it’s happened to all of us — this isn’t a tough step. If it’s a real piece of news, things get a lot harder.

在这一点上，你可能非常理解你开始的故事。您已经准备好了该过程的最后一步，也是最主观的步骤：决定它的含义。如果你暂时被洋葱链接或其他虚假故事所愚弄 - 说真的，它发生在我们所有人身上 - 这不是一个艰难的步骤。如果这是一条真正的新闻，事情就会变得更加困难。

You obviously don’t want to believe everything you see or read. But uncritically disbelieving everything is just as bad. Some news sources really are more consistently accurate than others. Some expert opinions are more trustworthy than your own amateur research. If you only believe things that you’ve checked with your own eyes, you’ll have an incredibly blinkered view of the world.

你显然不想相信你看到或读到的一切。但是，不加批判地不相信一切同样糟糕。有些新闻来源确实比其他新闻来源更准确。一些专家意见比你自己的业余研究更值得信赖。如果你只相信你亲眼所见的事情，你就会对世界有一个难以置信的眼光。

So the goal here isn’t to identify why a story is wrong. It’s to identify how the story works — which parts are complicated and subjective, which parts are probably accurate, and how much it should change your opinions or behavior.

因此，这里的目标不是确定为什么一个故事是错误的。这是为了确定故事是如何运作的——哪些部分是复杂和主观的，哪些部分可能是准确的，以及它应该在多大程度上改变你的观点或行为。

SOMETIMES EVERYBODY GETS THINGS WRONG 有时每个人都会做错事

Sometimes, even the most well-regarded news sources release stories that aren’t true. In one extreme 2013 example, hackers took over the Associated Press Twitter account and claimed there were explosions at the White House. The story was quickly debunked, but for the first few minutes, the average reader could very reasonably assume the news was real.

有时，即使是最受推崇的新闻来源也会发布不真实的故事。在2013年的一个极端例子中，黑客接管了美联社的Twitter帐户，并声称白宫发生了爆炸事件。这个故事很快就被揭穿了，但在最初的几分钟里，普通读者可以非常合理地假设这个消息是真实的。

More commonly, sources can lie, documents can be faked, and reporters can mishear quotes. Breaking news stories can be unreliable because nobody — including government officials and other authorities — knows what’s going on. Radio station WNYC published an excellent “Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook” for just this reason.

更常见的是，消息来源可能会撒谎，文件可能会伪造，记者可能会听错报价。突发新闻报道可能不可靠，因为没有人 - 包括政府官员和其他当局 - 知道发生了什么。正是出于这个原因，WNYC广播电台出版了一本出色的"突发新闻消费者手册"。

If you share stories on social media, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually post something that’s inaccurate or misleading, even if you’re diligently doing research.

如果你在社交媒体上分享故事，即使你正在努力做研究，你最终也很有可能发布一些不准确或误导性的东西。

That doesn’t mean that nothing is true or that every site is equally fake. You might see a bad story from an outlet that carefully outlines its sources, explains the context of an event, and corrects mistakes when it finds them. You’re much more likely to see a bad story from an outlet that posts context-free rumors and doesn’t explain where it’s getting information. If you read a site regularly over time, you’ll get a better sense of how much to trust it.

这并不意味着什么都不是真的，或者每个网站都是同样假的。您可能会从一家媒体上看到一个糟糕的故事，该媒体仔细概述了其来源，解释了事件的背景，并在发现错误时纠正错误。你更有可能从发布无上下文谣言的媒体上看到一个糟糕的故事，并且没有解释它从哪里获得信息。如果你随着时间的推移定期阅读一个网站，你会更好地了解它的信任程度。

By the same token, you might occasionally believe something false if you’re careful. But if you don’t care about getting things right, it’ll happen much more often.

出于同样的原因，如果你小心的话，你偶尔会相信一些错误的东西。但是，如果你不在乎把事情做好，它就会更频繁地发生。

CONCLUSION 结论

Solving misinformation and disinformation isn’t as simple as following a checklist. Getting too invested in the checklist can even backfire. Researcher danah boyd has described a dark side of media literacy education in schools — where asking students to think critically can cement a blanket assumption that news outlets are lying. And I don’t want to put all the responsibility for solving misinformation on individuals.

解决错误信息和虚假信息并不像遵循清单那么简单。对清单过于投入甚至会适得其反。研究员丹娜·博伊德（Danah Boyd）描述了学校媒体素养教育的阴暗面——要求学生批判性思考可以巩固新闻媒体在撒谎的全面假设。我不想把解决错误信息的所有责任都推给个人。

But here’s the thing: I think all this stuff is fun. Tracing the path of information online is one of my favorite activities, like solving a puzzle or directing an archaeological dig. I want to share that process with other people — and to make a case for why getting things right is more interesting and valuable than just confirming your beliefs or scoring points online.

但事情是这样的：我认为所有这些东西都很有趣。在线追踪信息的路径是我最喜欢的活动之一，比如解决一个难题或指导考古挖掘。我想与其他人分享这个过程，并说明为什么把事情做好比在网上确认你的信念或得分更有趣、更有价值。

And above all, I want to argue for treating investigation like a shovel, not a knife. Critical thinking shouldn’t just be a synonym for doubting or debunking something, and the point of research isn’t simply to poke holes in a story. It’s to understand the story better, or — if somebody is telling that story maliciously or incompetently — to get deep enough to find the truth.

最重要的是，我想主张像对待铲子一样对待调查，而不是刀子。批判性思维不应该只是怀疑或揭穿某事的同义词，研究的重点不仅仅是在故事中钻空子。这是为了更好地理解这个故事，或者——如果有人恶意或不称职地讲述这个故事——要足够深入地找到真相。