Even misinformation experts fall for convincing fake news footage

Evidence

If you didn’t guess right, don’t worry. Everyone is susceptible to fake news, including trained experts such as myself. In February 2021, my wife showed me a tweet with breaking news footage from Mars. We knew that NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance was going to land on the planet near the end of February, so we watched the video with much enthusiasm. There was even sound – mostly wind – accompanying the footage. We looked at each other full of wonder, and I asked: ‘Is this what Mars sounds like?’ I was blown away. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 45

Categorization

• SEED: The detail that NASA’s Perseverance-landing fake footage fooled a misinformation professor because it had wind sound and was contextually plausible is a memorable opening anecdote for a piece on why expertise doesn’t confer inoculation.
• XREF: connects to: Doctored videos can be shallowfakes, simple out-of-context cuts reused as misinformation — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 355; Only four percent of people can reliably identify fake news headlines — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 43; Highly anticipated events make even experts vulnerable to sophisticated fakes — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 46 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Highly anticipated events make even experts vulnerable to sophisticated fakes #corroborates (0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 46
• Misinformation spreaders fall for obvious online pranks and get widely mocked #complicates (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 233