Why and How to Check Sources
Please look at URLs and check sources before you click share.
I post a reminder about this about once a month on Facebook. This one came out clearer and briefer than usual, so I decided to copy it here for re-use.
You’ve all heard of the filter bubble effect and how disinformation shapes people’s social decisions on politically relevant information, often causing incoherent political decisions with no plausible relationship to reality; well, that happens when you click share without checking the source or thinking.
AnonHQ, Mind Unleashed, Southfront, etc. I shouldn’t have to keep reminding people that these are shit sources. Specifically, they’re Russian regime grey propaganda shit sources. ‘Grey’ propaganda outlet means one pretending to be “independent” which is actually closely associated with or directly controlled by the regime. With only open source data, most times it’s impossible to tell the difference whether a site is just closely associated or directly controlled, but for most practical purposes it doesn’t matter.
Longer list of some Russian grey sites:
PropOrNot only lists a few hundred, but my educated guess is that there’s really more like a few tens of thousands of them. They have backup sites looking quite innocuous kept in reserve to replace those that get deplatformed by the social media companies or discredited too much. When some get taken down, they transition some of their reserve sites, which they’ve been recruiting an audience for already by posting usually cute or emotive memes, to then output gradually more propaganda. I think Mind Unleashed is one of those. I’ve found some of those reserve sites through network data analysis.
The graph which first got me interested in social network data analysis:
Explanation of how it was made:
They are not your friends. When they post headlines or memes that resonate with your feelings or values, that’s just a recruitment tactic. Whether the particular post you’ve shared is true or how much of it is true is quite besides the point. Judging by how it makes you feel is also a very unreliable criterion.
Propaganda outlets typically never post more than about 40% lies (one of Goebbels’ principles) because otherwise they lose credibility and network reach and become ineffective. The most effective strategy is probably when they only share a small proportion of small but important lies, and about 95% of their content may be true, so that their content spreads far and wide with an uncritical audience, and those small but important lies get accepted as “obviously true” and then they can build further narratives on them.
Somewhat random pretty picture above was just to get your attention. Further info and ranting about this and how to check sources more carefully than just looking at what else they post in an unsystematic way:
To summarise the above article as briefly as I can now:
- Check what else the site or Page posts, especially on political topics; you can use advanced graph search operators to make this more efficient.
- Check one or more known Russian regime automated media content aggregator sites: do they amplify this site or author or meme, etc.?
- Check referrals network using e.g. Similarweb or Alexa tools.
- Check plagiarism using free tools to see where else the text has been shared and maybe where its first occurrence on internet probably was.
- Check photos or images with reverse image search tools to see where they’ve come from and where their first occurrence probably was.
There are much more advanced, systematic and efficient techniques and tools available too, but the simple tests above will probably help you catch 95%.
General rule/ guideline / begging request: if you don’t recognize the source and you’re not familiar with its faults and foibles like we used to be about broadcast media sources, just don’t share it unless you’ve checked it out first.
If in doubt, don’t click. Interacting is effectively promoting the post and more importantly its source through the network, long after you’ve seen it, even to people you don’t know. You may have a different intention for your action, but this is how this networked environment works, for now. Interacting or clicking is effectively promoting content and its source through the network.
