Stop Spreading Lies on Social Media

Misinformation runs rampant on social media these days, unrestrained due to a lack of fact-checking, community policing, or even interest in the truth anymore. William K. Clifford, English mathematician and philosopher, has written many an essay railing against spreading misinformation without doing your part to research and adequately support your beliefs. He just happened to write them a century and a half ago.

Specifically, Clifford’s “Ethics of Belief” (1877) reads like the rant of a man absolutely fed up with the bullshit spread by people who care not for the truth, but love the sensationalism of misinformation and getting to believe that which gives them a dopamine rush and/or confirms their biases.

God, he would hate social media.

On platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or my vice of choice, Threads, users are quick to post whatever will garner more engagement, even if it’s at the cost of the truth. Everything needs a hook; everything must be scroll-stopping, engaging, trending, addicting, nevermind if it’s true. As long as the numbers go up, then the poster can get that hit of sweet dopamine from the artificial validation of this riveting “breaking news” story or trending controversy they shared their beliefs on.

“But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 4)

And yet, so many ride the high of stolen validation by sharing misinformation without bothering once to check if it is true.

Don’t Believe Everything You See On The Internet

As a millenial, it feels odd to me to realize I don’t know when we stopped repeating this phrase to each other. “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.”

What feels even more odd to think about is how during that early era, it’s possible that we were more honest and careful with what we shared on the internet. Now, we believe so much more readily, spread lies so much more easily, and yet there’s far more evidence that so much of what we see is fabricated falsehoods.

If things had progressed logically and sensibly, society as a whole should both have become better at consistently checking sources of information, and more stringent in requiring factual sources to be cited.

Instead, we’re quickly devolving into this toilet bowl swirl of misinformation, and if you dare ask for a source, you’re often met with a sharp, “It’s not my job to educate you. Google is free,” even if the OP didn’t bother to use the free Google search, themselves.

Social Media Did This to Us

Full stop.

I don’t know when we stopped being skeptical of everything we read on the internet, but I’m quite sure of why. Or rather, what (maybe who) led us here. Social media’s incessant demand for engaging content has led us by the nose to this point in humanity’s trajectory where we’ll post whatever feeds the beast, in exchange for our pittance of views, likes, comments, follows, which translate to so little in the real world.

Clifford named part of the feeling that drives the desire to quickly share thoughts on trending topics without checking if they’re true: “It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 4)

All made worse by the validation of likes, comments, follows, engagement. To be the first to “break” the news on social media, and thus get a chance at being one of those to go viral for the topic sends people clamoring to hit “post” before checking their sources. Questioning things gets far fewer likes, so why bother.

In turn, those who’ve been bit by the viral bug at least once with a good post may feel the FOMO of not wanting to miss out on sharing their special thoughts on the next new trending topic. In fact, going viral on social media leads to people feeling it’s now their duty to not let down the followers they gained from the last trending post, so they have to post their thoughts on this new topic that they’re still wildly unqualified to have an opinion on.

And again and again, as they receive positive feedback for jumping on trending topics quickly, someone can continue to post and spread beliefs on topics they know nothing of, yet receive validation and even grow a following for their thoughts, anyways.

This cycle quickly can turn any regular social media user into a misinfo-monster, because woe be to the user who dares question this new trending-topic-expert on their thoughts that they got 1,000 likes on. You can respond to someone who’s in this trending-viral-misinfo loop with facts that very clearly contradict what they’ve posted, and instead of any rational back-and-forth, you quickly become the victim of an emotional lashing out, often complete with logical fallacies, ad hominem insults, and sometimes even a call for their followers to attack you who dares question the trending-topic-expert.

Get too deep in it, and they’ll have done a search through your profile and maybe even pasted your name into Google to find a crack in your armor to poke at, no matter how irrelevant to the topic.

Clifford, writing in from 1877, has a thought on why this might consistently play out this way on social media:

“And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 4)

Social media feeds into the positive dopamine hits. Questioning the things we read and readily believe takes work and naturally feels more negative, especially if you’re to find that something you believed was not true. In the hedonistic fervor of social media, most forego any icky feelings and continue to feed their confirmation biases instead. And many will readily lash out to protect their positive dopamine hits from any who’d question them.

We’re Not the Only Ones To Blame, But It’s Up to Us to Do Something About It

In the end, as critical as I sound, I’m not writing just from a place of outside observation. Much of that trending-topic-expert-misinfo-cycle analysis I provided above comes from firsthand experience. The rush of going viral can trick anyone into chasing that high, and I’ve felt it and I’ve fell for it. I’ve had to quickly pull down many posts when I realized I rushed too quickly to be one of the first to break news on a new trending topic in my own secret hopes of going viral.

I think as much as we each individually are responsible for doing our part to not spread misinformation, we also cannot be held fully responsible. Social media companies have openly admitted that their algorithm is rigged for casino-gambling-style addictions. They’re responsible for building the algorithms that feed off engagement, both negative and positive. Their algorithms are built to fan the flames of misinformation.

The way the algorithm feeds misinformation spread:

• Misinformation (typically that sparks heightened emotion, catching attention easily) gets posted.
• Most people are semi-siloed in the algorithm to view posts from people who share similar beliefs and biases, so initially, posts get fed to people who are most likely to agree with them.
• Those who hope to go viral smell a trend brewing and quickly share the misinfo without checking the source.
• A few skeptics question the validity of the info in the comments, increasing engagement and pushing the post further into the algorithm.
• People begin to argue in the comments over the validity of the info, escalating comments and shares and views, pushing the topic quickly into viral territory.
• More people see the controversy brewing and want to share their opinion as if they’re experts on the topic, in hopes of validation from their siloed followers that typically agree with them.
• More people argue.
• The wildfire escapes containment, jumps social media platforms, and has gone officially viral, whether it’s true or not.

A misinformation nightmare. The solution? Verify information before you share it on social media.

“‘But,’ says one, ‘I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.’

Then he should have no time to believe.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 6)

And if you have no time to check your sources, then you should have no time to post about it.

Misinformation Hurts Society As a Whole

Whether or not you’re participating in the actual sharing of the misinformation doesn’t actually matter. If you’re reading the posts with misinfo and not questioning their validity or checking sources, you’re absorbing it, and that’s harmful, too.

“No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 3)

The more we readily believe anything social media feeds us without checking sources, the more we’ll readily believe the bullshit without questioning it. Then one day, without thinking about it, we’ll act on the bullshit. There’s no getting around it. I’ve seen this play out in a number of dangerous ways with seemingly simple posts about misinfo that went viral.

And further, it’s not just our potentially acting on the false beliefs that’s the problem; it’s that we didn’t bother to check for the truth in the first place.

“The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though this is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 5)

I’d wager that most who have been fighting the good fight against misinfo on social media have felt similarly, that society is moving backwards in its barbaric pursuit of instant gratification at the cost of intellectualism and progression. By readily believing and spreading misinformation on the internet, we are setting humanity back significantly.

“[B]y refusing to do our part towards the building up of the fabric which shall be inherited by our children, we are tending to cut off ourselves and our race from the human line.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 7)

Brutal.

“To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 5)

Cite your sources, stifle no doubts, and don’t believe everything you read on the internet, friends.

Thanks for reading. If you find value in my work, please feel free to check out my blog where I do regular fact checks and dive deeper into current events and US politics. Also, if you really see the value in my work, please consider “buying me a coffee”. I pour a lot of love into these articles in hopes to keep the conversations going around topics I find important.

Absolutely no generative AI or AI that I’m aware of was used to write this article.

Some more good quotes from Clifford, for those interested:

“Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of bringing a plague upon his family and his neighbours?” (Clifford, 1877, p. 4)

“Everytime we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 4)

“But how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting or pleasant?” (Clifford, 1877, p. 5)

“If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it– the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 5)

“It is never lawful to stifle a doubt.” (Clifford, 1877, p. 6)

References

Clifford, W. K. 1886. “The Ethics of Belief.” Originally published in Contemporary Review, 1877; reprinted in William K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, ed. Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock. Macmillan. 1886, pp. 1–6. (The “Ethics of Belief,” and excerpts from it, is widely reprinted and reposted here).