他们说真相就在那里，这确实(does)包括互联网。问题是真相被扭曲、误导和彻头彻尾的虚假信息所淹没。
好消息是，只要有一些（非）常识，就有可能很好地了解互联网上的真假。
考虑源头
不管是谁说的，真实的事情都是真实的，但是可靠、透明的消息来源(trusted, transparent source)准确报告事实的可能性远高于记录不佳或未知的消息来源。因此，最初您可以将更多权重分配给受监管的信息来源（例如科学或新闻委员会），并坚持使用已知的收集和报道新闻的方法。
非常警惕具有匿名所有者和作者的随机网站。此类网站可能会在某种喜欢阴谋的互联网用户(conspiracy-loving internet user)中非常受欢迎，他们会津津有味地分享这些链接。如果您与故事或信息的第一次接触来自此类网站，那么您确认某事是真是假的下一步就是证实该信息。
接下来，考虑多个来源
即使您认为第一个来源既可靠又开放，您也应该从几个独立来源中寻找基本事实的佐证。
他们将提供有关故事的其他角度、附加信息并证实您的第一个来源的来源和报告。如果多个独立消息来源都在说同一件事，那么他们所说的是事实的可能性就会上升。
寻找 AP 式的覆盖范围
报道故事的方式有很多种。培训记者向公众报道事件和信息的传统方式遵循一些基本规则，其中包括：
- 告诉读者“谁、什么、何时、何地以及如何”
- 首先给出最重要的事实，然后在故事后面给出其他事实
- 报告发生的事情，无需旋转或添加您自己的意见
当一个故事是从特定的政治或意识形态观点写成时，它开始不再是新闻并进入编辑领域。
这将我们带到美联社(Associated Press)或“AP”报告标准。您可以在此处(here)查看 AP 的要求。简而言之，美联社风格的故事会尽量减少偏见，并将关键事实的解释留给你。所以至少在你对什么是真的什么不是的总体评估中包括一个故事的美联社版本是值得的。
视频和照片不是事实
我们生活在一个先进的照片和视频处理时代。Photoshop和deepfake人工智能技术意味着传播错误信息的人可以创建各种视觉“证据”，这些“证据”部分或完全是捏造的。
这意味着值得等待法医专家验证这些媒体没有被篡改。即使照片或视频没有被篡改，也不意味着它反映了真相或至少反映了全部真相。
照片只是时间的快照。它不会告诉您拍摄照片之前或之后发生的事情。您看不到框架外发生的事情，也没有图像内容的上下文。所有这些都从根本上改变了图像的含义！
视频也是如此。可以将视频(Videos)剪辑成与特定叙述保持一致的方式。这意味着您不知道剪辑之前或之后发生了什么。你不知道剪辑剪辑之间发生了什么。您也不知道剪辑框架之外发生了什么。因此，不要对照片或视频材料本身赋予过多的重量。
审查来源和参考文献
每个故事都基于一系列其他报道，直到它回到主要来源。也就是说，除非故事的作者直接从主要来源报道！每当有人提出索赔或转发事件时，查找他们引用的来源至关重要。这些来源可靠吗？他们从哪里得到信息？
至关重要的是，引用的来源是否真的支持依赖它的原始陈述的解释或结论？通过遵循参考链，您可以发现事情被扭曲或捏造的地方。
应用基本的批判性思维
除了核实事实和考虑信息来源外，在评估陈述的真假时，您还应该尝试至少经历一个基本的批判性思维过程。这涉及什么？让我们把要点去掉，让它变得简单：
- 询问(Ask)信息的合理性。非凡的主张需要非凡的证据！
- 逻辑链条是否完整？沿线某处是否进行了无根据的逻辑飞跃？
- 是否(Are)可以从所提供的事实中得出其他解释或结论？
- 是否有合理的怀疑事实可能是错误的？（例如不可靠的证人）
- 所呈现的故事的可行性如何？
关键是不要仅仅从你手头的信息中挖掘出真正的真相。这是为了确定对你实际看到的东西有多少怀疑是合理的。
不要使用社交媒体(Use Social Media)作为您(Your Source)的新闻来源(News)
为了清理信息流，这可能是您可以做的最重要的事情。社交媒体(Social media)很容易受到偏见的影响，因为它故意将观点相似的人联系在一起。您没有得到反映平均或不同观点的意见和故事的提要。
虽然通过社交媒体了解重要的事情是完全可以的，但在那里寻找确认或原始事实并不是一个好主意。你最好走出社交媒体并在其他地方进行事实调查。
有选择地应用这些技巧
我们希望本文中的建议可以帮助您减少相信不良信息的频率，让您更有信心识别好信息。但是，显然不可能将每天收到的每一点信息都仔细检查到这个级别。你永远没有时间做其他事情。当然，对于大多数事情，您也可以随时求助于Snopes等事实检查网站，但即使是这些网站也可能会出错。
那你该怎么办？我们建议您只对重要的故事和信息进行深入审查。这可能意味着它们对您个人很重要，或者它们在更普遍的意义上很重要。
那个名人真的(Did)往别人脸上泼了酒吗？可能没关系。这不是一个重要的主张。然而，如果有人在兜售一种未经证实和未经检验的癌症治疗方法，那就需要仔细调查了。
你必须对事物进行一种“主题分类”，并决定哪些事情对你来说太琐碎或太无关紧要。话虽如此，不要将您不太确定的信息传递给其他人，因为它可能对他们相关或重要，如果他们不批评并最终相信它，甚至可能导致伤害。
定义声明是真是假可能很难，而且没有绝对准确度之类的东西，但是通过应用最基本的过滤器，您可以获得 90% 的准确率。
How To Tell What’s True or False On The Internet
They say the truth is out there and that does include the internet. The problem is that the truth is drowned out by the sheer weight of twisted, misleading and outright false information.
The good news is that with some (un)common sense, it’s possible to get a good sense of what’s likely to be true or false on the internet.
Consider The Source
True things are true regardless of who says them, but the likelihood of a trusted, transparent source accurately reporting the facts is much higher than ones with a poor or unknown track record. So initially you can assign more weight to sources of information that are subject to regulation (such as scientific or journalistic boards) and stick to known methodologies of gathering and reporting the news.
Be very wary of random websites with anonymous owners and writers. Such sites can be very popular among a certain type of conspiracy-loving internet user, who will share these links with gusto. If your first contact with a story or information is from such a site, your next step to confirming if something is true or false is to corroborate the information.
Next, Consider Multiple Sources
Even if you regard the first source as being both trustworthy and open, you should look for corroboration of the basic facts from several independent sources.
They’ll provide other angles on the story, additional information and corroborate the sources and reporting of your first source. If multiple independent sources are saying the same thing, the probability of what they say being the truth goes up.
Look For AP-style Coverage
There are many different ways to report a story. The traditional way that journalists are trained to report events and information to the public follows a few basic rules, which include things like:
- Tell the readers “who, what, when, where and how”
- Give the most important facts first and additional facts later in the story
- Report what happened without spin or adding your own opinions
When a story is written from a particular political or ideological view, it begins to stop being news and moves into the editorial realm.
Which brings us to Associated Press or “AP” reporting standards. You can see what the AP mandates here. In short, AP-style stories try to minimize bias and leave the interpretation of key facts up to you. So at the very least it’s worth including the AP version of a story in your total assessment of what’s true and what isn’t.
Videos And Photos Are Not The Truth
We live in an age of advanced photo and video manipulation. Photoshop and deepfake artificial intelligence techniques mean that people spreading misinformation can create all sorts of visual “evidence” that’s partially or completely fabricated.
Which means it’s worth waiting for forensic experts to verify that these media have not been tampered with. Even if a photo or video has not been tampered with, that does not mean it reflects the truth or at least the whole truth.
A photo is just a snapshot in time. It tells you nothing about what happened before or after the photo was taken. You can’t see what’s going on outside the frame and you have no context for the content of the image. All of these things fundamentally change what the image means!
The same goes for video. Videos can be cut in such a way that they align with a certain narrative. Which means you don’t know what happened before or after the clip. You don’t know what happened between cuts in the clip. You also don’t know what happened outside of the frame of the clip. So don’t attach too much weight to either photo or video material by itself.
Review Sources And References
Every story is based on a chain of other reporting until it leads back to the primary source. That is, unless the writer of the story is reporting directly from the primary source! Whenever someone makes a claim or relays events, it’s critically important that you look up the sources they are quoting. Are those sources reliable? Where did they get their information from?
Crucially, does the quoted source actually support the interpretation or conclusion of the original statement that relies on it? By following the chain of references, you can discover where things have been twisted or fabricated.
Apply Basic Critical Thinking
Apart from fact-checking and considering the source of information, you should also try to go through at least a basic critical-thinking process when assessing whether a statement is true or false. What does that involve? Let’s whip out the bullet points and make it easy:
- Ask how reasonable the information is. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!
- Is the chain of logic unbroken? Is an unwarranted leap of logic made somewhere along the line?
- Are there alternative explanations or conclusions that can be drawn from the facts as presented?
- Is there reasonable doubt that the facts could be wrong? (e.g. unreliable witnesses)
- How feasible is the story as presented?
The point is not to dig out the real truth just from the information you have at hand. It’s to establish how much doubt is reasonable about what you’re actually seeing.
Don’t Use Social Media As Your Source Of News
This is probably the most important thing you can do in order to clean up your stream of information. Social media is highly-susceptible to bias, because it deliberately networks people with similar views together. You aren’t getting a feed of opinions and stories that reflect an average or varied set of views.
While it’s perfectly fine to catch wind of something important via social media, it’s not a great idea to look for confirmation or raw facts there. You’re much better off stepping outside of social media and doing your fact finding elsewhere instead.
Apply These Tips Selectively
We hope the advice in this article will help you believe bad information less often and let you identify good information with more confidence. However, it’s obviously impossible to scrutinize each and every bit of information that comes your way each day to this level. You’d never have time to do anything else. Of course, you can always turn to fact-checking sites such as Snopes for most things as well, but even these sites can get it wrong.
So what are you supposed to do then? We suggest that you only apply deep scrutiny to stories and information that matter. That can either mean that they matter to you personally or that they matter in a more universal sense.
Did that celebrity really throw a drink in someone’s face? It probably doesn’t matter. This isn’t an important claim. However, if someone is touting an unproven and untested cure for cancer, that’s very much something to investigate carefully.
You have to apply a sort of “topic triage” to things and decide which things are too trivial or too irrelevant to you to wrestle with. That being said, don’t pass on information you aren’t very sure about to other people, because it might be relevant or important to them and can even lead to harm if they aren’t critical about it and end up believing it.
Defining whether a claim is true or false can be hard and there’s no such thing as absolute accuracy, but by applying the most basic of filters, you can get 90% there.
