Ways to Avoid Information Pollution on the Internet

Accurate information is critical whether we are in a crisis like war or not. Because with the increase in the possibilities offered by the internet, anyone can share the information they want. While this made it easier to get information from reliable personalities, it also made it possible for even those who had no knowledge of the subject to address the masses.

Worse yet, the information presented can now be presented as true even if it is false. The effects of false information reaching millions of people can range from internal conflicts between individuals to external conflicts. This situation, which becomes widespread especially in times such as war, pushes us to confirm the correct information. So how can we do this?

First of all, there are 5 factors to keep in mind when getting information from a source:

Let’s say you saw a striking news headline and headline and entered the news. It also contains striking information. At this point, there are 5 factors that you should consider before placing the information in your head as it is or sharing it with others. We can list them as follows:

• The originality of the page and the content
• The source of the content
• The date the content was created
• The location of the news content
• Purpose of the news

Before we talk about these, let’s state that none of them are sufficient on their own. In other words, the source of original content may not be reliable. Or a piece of information you get from a trusted person may be from an old news. In this case, you have to consider all the items.

Duplicate news gives the same information in the same way, without adding anything:

Yes, if two news sites are processing the same content, the key information you can get from both is the same. However, if a piece of content is published in the same way on other news sites, this is mostly a move made to stay on the agenda rather than to deliver the news to the audience.

At this point, you can head to sites that you know use a unique language. This indicates that editors control and process information in their own unique way. That is, the probability that the information has been checked and superimposed increases.

When the source is unreliable, everyone can say what they want, and we can’t call any of them ‘lies’:

This can be compared to being “guilty until proven innocent”. As we said at the beginning, it is very easy today to present any information as if it is true.

At this point, you can turn to the source section of the site where you consume the news in order to prevent false information. Although some sites do not show the source in their news, you can confirm the source by going to different sites.

Images from an old war can be laid before you as if they were new:

We’ve seen many examples of this in the past. Even in today’s Ukraine-Russia tension, we see photos from old wars being served as if they were new in order to stir things up. You can use confirmation tools such as Google Images, which we will include in the rest of our content, to confirm whether these images are wrong.

Images from different places can be presented to you as if they were from the scene:

Just as old news images are presented as new, images taken in different places may appear without you noticing. . Here, for example, you can review a content shared on Instagram by selecting a location from this link, and if the characteristics of the environment in the image or video can be distinguished, you can provide location via Google Maps and Google Earth.

If it is a video shared on YouTube, search for the video name and select the option to sort by date. This will help you review both the topicality and location accuracy of the content.

News sites may be making propaganda or trying to push you to a certain thought: Be an objective reader

The sources you consume the news can present information in line with their own objectives. To give an example from the current Ukraine-Russia crisis, both sides can record the same moment and give it in different languages. At this point, you have one victim and one hero’s news.

Your objectivity can save you from the influence of both or push you to the side that is right. For this reason, you need to keep in mind that even if you trust your sources, they may willingly or unintentionally provide false information.

Some of the methods you can use to confirm the accuracy of the information:

• Checking the accuracy of images by reverse search
• Confirming deep fake videos
• Images and checking the accuracy of the videos on different platforms

You can find the information of an image shared by reverse search method

This is mostly using titles like ‘First Images Arrived’ content will be useful to you. To understand the accuracy of an image shared in the said content, simply download the image or copy its link and search it on Google Images. In this way, other sites using the image in question will be brought to you.

At this point, you can check the different sites where the image is used to confirm the up-to-dateness and accuracy of the content. These features are also available in different search engines.

You may come across eerily realistic videos of important personalities saying or doing things you never expected

Deepfake apps, artificial With the development of intelligence, it becomes more advanced every day. At this point, we see that it is used for manipulation purposes when it is in the hands of malicious people. In order not to be fooled by such situations, you can stop the videos and follow the eye and nose movements of the people. You can use applications such as

or Sensity, Deepware or DeepFake-o-meter.

You can search for images and videos on different platforms

Let’s start with a video shared on YouTube. You can search for this video with the same name and see how it is shared on different channels. Or if you want to take the job to search on the internet, you can use the YouTube DataViewer application. With this site, you can take certain frames from the video and perform the reverse search we mentioned in the first article with the image you want.

On Twitter, the Advanced Search section comes to your aid. Here you can search for any word by the account it was shared with, time and date. Apart from that, if you only want to search for a certain phrase, you can enclose the phrase you want to search in “this way” in double quotes, as in Google.

In addition, if you write an expression and add ‘filter:media’ next to it, the posts that contain the phrase you mentioned but only contain photos or videos will be listed. In this way, you can review the dates of a shared content.

Next to the Filter pattern, you can also add different words such as retweets, replies or images. When you put a minus (-) at the beginning of the filter (like -filter:retweets), the results are listed, excluding retweets.

Although the verification methods we have included in our content will greatly help you in reaching the correct information, you should also keep in mind that nothing can be completely reliable. You can also share the verification methods you use in the comments section.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5