A month after the 2020 presidential election, a national poll by Quinnipiac University found that 34% of registered voters thought Joe Biden’s win was not legitimate. A month later, after thousands of his followers stormed the Capitol, Trump was deplatformed by all major social networks, leading to a 73% decline in online misinformation about election fraud.
If we’ve learned one thing from the Capitol riot, it’s that we can no longer ignore the dangers of misinformation and how it spreads.
That’s why we need your help to combat these lies — because when our democracy or science are brought into question, our work to stabilize the climate, protect human health and move our country forward is put at risk.
This guide will show you how to spot misinformation in your feeds, and then give you step-by-step instructions to get social networks to take notice — and take it down.
How to identify misinformation
1. Questions to ask when evaluating a post.
If something catches your eye that doesn’t seem quite right, ask yourself the following questions — and definitely run through this list before sharing content online:
- Do you recognize the source? Does it even reference one that you can easily find?
- Does the information seem believable?
- Is it written in the style you’d expect from a professional news organization?
- Is the post written in a thoughtful, measured way and not in a way that provokes strong emotions, particularly anger or fear?
2. Websites you can use to verify articles and social media posts.
If you answered “no” to any of the questions above, you should run a search on any of these sites to double-check the facts.
- Climate Feedback is a worldwide network of scientists who sort fact from fiction in media coverage of climate change.
- PolitiFact is part of the nonprofit Poynter Institute, focused on politics.
- Fact Checker is run by the award-winning fact-checking team at the Washington Post.
- Snopes.com is one of the oldest and largest fact-checking sites online, covering anything and everything.
- Lead Stories was co-founded by a registered Independent and a registered Republican, so conservatives may find it more trustworthy.
3. Other tools, apps and web extensions that can help you verify content.
The following resources can give you near-instant feedback or help you do additional digging:
- Newsguard is a browser extension and app that tells you if a site is reliable as you browse online news. ($2.95/month in the U.S., £2.95 in the UK, €2.95 in the EU.)
- Bot Sentinel and Botometer will tell you if a Twitter account is a bot.
- Hoaxy is a tool that visualizes the spread of articles online.
- Google Reverse Image Search (beginner)and Metadata2Go.com (advanced) show you the history of an image and how it has been used.
- InVID (advanced) is an app that helps you check the reliability and accuracy of video files on social media.
Reporting misinformation on Facebook
1. A visual demonstration of the process.
2. Step-by-step instructions.
a) Click on the three dots in the upper right-hand corner of the post.
b) At the bottom of the list that appears, click on “Report post.”
c) Choose “False information,” and then whatever category you think the post falls under. If you don’t know, choose “Something else.”
Reporting misinformation on Twitter
1. A visual demonstration of the process.
2. Step-by-step instructions.
a) Click on the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the tweet.
b) At the bottom of the list, click on “Report Tweet.”
c) Choose “It’s misleading,” and then follow the prompts to identify the type of misinformation you are reporting.
Reporting misinformation on YouTube
1. A visual demonstration of the process.
2. Step-by-step instructions.
a) Click on the three dots in the bottom right-hand corner, below the video, next to the “thumbs up”/“thumbs down” icons and the share function.
b) At the top of the list that appears, click on “Report.”
c) No “misinformation” reason is offered, so choose “Spam or misleading,” then “Scams or fraud” in the dropdown list. At the bottom right-hand corner, click “Next.”
d) Here you can ask YouTube to do more to combat climate misinformation. Suggested text you can use: “Please detox your algorithm, add ‘climate misinformation’ to your borderline-content policy and correct the record by working with independent fact-checkers to inform users who have seen or interacted with this video.”
Sign up for the Misinformation Brigade
The Misinformation Brigade has grown into a powerful and informed group helping to combat the dangerous lies that get in the way of real progress.
Join us — and make us stronger by inviting your friends and family to join, too.