Myths on social media

As the title of the post indicates, I am going to be busting a few myths that are prevalent in the social media, sites like Facebook, Google+ and twitter. In the process of busting myths I am also going to explain why spreading these myths can be a bad thing.

In my opinion, before one shares information on these sites, it is one's responsibility to check the authenticity of the information. Blindly clicking on the share button or forwarding emails can be detrimental especially when the social media has become so powerful. Everyone saw how Facebook united people in Egypt and other revolution affected countries last year. Just like how a status message can spark a revolution, false information can also spread like wildfire can make the whole world "dumb".

I can broadly classify the rumors and false information into three categories...

1. The ones that pass as pranks - This is the most common one. If one doesn't check for authenticity, one can really make a fool of oneself. The following is a post that was shared by a number of people on Facebook.

"Every SIM CARD has a name. Try this:

1st step : from your mobile number, take the last 3 numbers. Example-07800 969684, take "684"only

2nd step: Write this @*[684:0] in the comment box below, replacing the 3 numbers with your own.

3rd step: remove the * sign and press enter in the comment box"

I like this one in particular because it is a smart prank. By following the above instructions a name magically appears in the comment. It doesn't really look like a prank, especially when Facebook has been sharing information about its users with sites like rotten tomatoes to offer a personalized experience, it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that Facebook is getting information about one's SIM card from the phone carriers.

Let me first say how one could have identified that this was a prank post. Generally the first step in assessing the authenticity of such posts is to google it. Most of times you get the answer that you are looking for. If no information was available on Google, a second, not so intuitive, step should have been to see what happened when the fourth digit was added. Another name would have appeared in the comment. Two questions should have popped up at that moment - How can there be a total of only 1000 names (if you consider only the last three digits) for all the SIM cards in the world and how can a new name appear when the fourth digit is added. These two questions should have been enough for one to at least doubt the prank and not get fooled by it.

So how does this random name appear? Firstly, it is not a random name. This is Facebook's code for tagging people or pages - "@[pageID:0]" is the general syntax. When ones hovers the mouse pointer over someone's name on Facebook, one can see the the pageID at the bottom corner of one's browser. This works for profiles which haven't started using the new "timeline" feature. Therefore it works for any number (not just the last three digits of one's mobile number) as long as there is a page/profile on Facebook with that number as pageID.

The reason I called the prank smart is because of the way the instructions were written. When one types "@[" followed by a number, Facebook starts predicting the page that one wants to tag. This could have alerted people as everyone is familiar with tagging friends on comments. In order to avoid this, the person who started the prank asked everyone to add the "*" sign after "@" in the second step and then in the third step, asked everyone to remove "*" to get the general tagging syntax, for this prank to work.

Smart prank which fooled quite a lot of people...

2. The ones that can affect the society - I personally fear this category. A classic example is a post which claim that entering ATM pins in reverse order can alert the police. This is how the post goes

"If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM, you can notify the police by entering your PIN in reverse. For example if your PIN is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your PIN is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you. This information was recently broadcasted [sic] on TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don't know it exists. Please pass this along to everyone possible." 

So how did this myth start? This urban myth comes from a patent in 1998 by a Chicago businessman named Joseph Zingher. He wanted this to be implemented at all the ATMs in the country. A few states in the US tried passing the bill but nothing came out. There were a few obvious flaws with this alert system. Bank account holders with ATM pins what are palindromic, like 1221, will not be able to use this alert system. Zingher did come up with a workaround but even then the banks were not ready to adopt it as they argued saying that it is difficult to remember one's pin under stress and to reconstruct it backwards with someone is pointing a gun to one's head would be even more difficult. Hence this alert system was never implemented. Click here for more information on this.

By spreading this rumor on social media one is guilty of misleading others into believing that the police would be alerted by the ATM rather that trying to seek help on their own and this can be extremely dangerous. Hence, in this case, checking for authenticity of the information before sharing it is extremely important.

3. The ones that test people's scientific ignorance - Though this category is not really dangerous, in the long run, it would defeat the purpose of science education in school. The news media is guilty of doing this as they want to sensationalize scientific facts in order to draw the audience's attention. But emails and posts on Facebook can do the same too. Here is an example

"Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will culminate on August 27 when the Mars comes within 34.65M miles (56 million kilometers) off Earth. Be sure to watch the sky on August 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. 

The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287

NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again"

It is true that on August 27 2003, Mars was one of the brightest object in the night sky because Mars was closer to Earth than that it has been in the last 60,000 years. And Mars wouldn't come this close to Earth till 2287. But what questions the credibility of the mail is the addition of two sentences in between - "It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and "It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye". In order for this to happen, since Mars is roughly twice as big as the moon, it should be at a distance of about 760,000 kilometers from Earth. This is about 75 times closer than Mars' closest approach to Earth, which is 56 million kilometers. And even if this happens, it cannot happen all of a sudden at a particular time on one night. It can happen only over a long period of time. The other fact that should be remembered is that Earth and Mars come close to one another every two years and the distance between the two planets when this happens is slightly greater than 56 million kilometers. In this case one should be able to see Mars as big as the full moon every two years or so and not on this particular day alone.

So what's wrong about this mail? Firstly the claim that Mars will be as large as the full moon is ridiculous. Secondly, not all the 800 million users of Facebook and a even greater number of people of emails are scientifically literate. When this mail reaches them, it just spreads ignorance. And when a person who is fortunate to learn science in school forwards the mail without checking the credibility he/she is guilty of spreading the false information to the less fortunate people who will have no reason to doubt this claim. The worst of all the wrong things about this mail is that it is being forwarded every year on August 27 since 2003 as it can been seen that the mail specifies only the date while the year has been conveniently left out.

Here is link which explains this hoax and here is an article by Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer on the same topic.

I hope, with these three examples, I have stressed the importance of checking the credibility of any information that is shared on any form of social media. People might not believe anything and everything that is on the web. But when the information is provided by their friends, they tend to believe it more, sometimes even blindly. Hence it is the responsibility of the people who share information to make an effort to avoid sharing false information.