John Hatchard 🍁

In an age when anyone can be a publisher, and extravagant tales spread at the speed of a keystroke, understanding how previous societies dealt with similar challenges isn’t just academic – it’s essential.

As we navigate our own information revolution, those early skeptics’ questions remain urgent: Who bears responsibility when false information leads to real harm? How do we protect the most vulnerable from exploitation by those who profit from confusion and fear?

Especially during times of technological change and social upheaval. www.icfj.org/sites/defaul...

The Long and Brutal History of Fake News Bogus news has been around a lot longer than real news. And it’s left a lot of destruction behind.

The witch hunts offer a sobering reminder that delusion and misinformation are recurring features of human society;

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified that the company’s algorithms are dangerous – here’s how they can manipulate you You have evolved to tap into the wisdom of the crowds. But on social media, your cognitive biases can lead you astray, something organized disinformation campaigns count on.

These platforms, like the printing presses of old, don’t just distribute information. They shape what we believe through algorithms that prioritize engagement over accuracy: The more a story is repeated, the more priority it gets.

News Platform Fact Sheet How Americans get news has greatly changed in the 21st century. Most now use digital devices for news at least sometimes. Read about the platforms they turn to.

Today, 54% of American adults get at least some news from social media platforms.

4. Speed of a keystroke

Early modern skeptics reserved their harshest criticism not for those who believed in witches but for those who spread the stories. Yet they were curiously silent on the ultimate arbiters and financial beneficiaries of what got printed and circulated: the publishers.

The more viewers, the higher the likelihood of more engagement, and so on – creating a cycle of confirmation bias.

Here are 4 key points from the Facebook whistleblower's testimony on Capitol Hill Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen electrified Washington on Tuesday with testimony about how the company knew about potential harm to users and decided to hide that information.

Social media channels are particularly fertile ground. Companies’ algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, so a post that receives likes, shares and comments will be shown to more people.

We’re more likely to believe stories that feel familiar, stories that connect to content we’ve previously seen. Likes, shares and retweets becomes proxies for truth. Emotional content designed to shock or outrage spreads far and fast. doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Misinformation, disinformation and hoaxes: What’s the difference? Though many people are just paying attention to these problems now, they are not new – and they even date back to ancient Rome.

Today’s researchers have identified similar patterns in how misinformation and disinformation – false information intended to confuse or manipulate people – spreads online.

( Cambridge Texts In The History Of Philosophy) Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas M. Lennon, Paul J. Olscamp The Search After Truth With Elucidations Of The Search After Truth Cambridge University Press ( :... ( Cambridge Texts In The History Of Philosophy) Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas M. Lennon, Paul J. Olscamp The Search After Truth With Elucidations Of The Search...

“If they were to cease punishing (women accused of witchcraft) and treat them as mad people,” Malebranche wrote, “in a little while they would no longer be sorcerers.”

The more stories, and the more they were told, the greater the influence on the imagination. The repetition served as false confirmation. www.torrossa.com/en/resources...

Believed that our imaginations have enormous power to convince us of things that are not true – especially fear of invisible, malevolent forces. He noted that “extravagant tales of witchcraft are taken as authentic histories,” increasing people’s credulity.

Nicolas Malebranche - Wikipedia

Nicolas Malebranche, a 17th-century French philosopher;

They identified “melancholics,” people predisposed to anxiety and fantastical thinking, as particularly susceptible. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

To believing extraordinary claims. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Certain people are more vulnerable; doi.org/10.3390/mti6...

3. Psychology of viral lies

Early modern skeptics understood something we’re still grappling with today: doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...

Why did the Scottish witch hunts end? - BBC Bitesize Learn why witch hunts across Scotland and Europe ended in the 18th Century. BBC Bitesize Scotland History article for learners at Third Level Curriculum for Excellence.

Witch hunts petered out throughout the 1700s across Europe. Doubt about the standards of evidence, and increased awareness that accused “witches” may have been suffering from delusion, were factors in the end of the persecution. The skeptics’ voices were heard.

The Business of Books In 1450 very few English men or women were personally familiar with a book; by 1850, the great majority of people daily encountered books, magazines, or news...

Demonologists benefited from the social and political status associated with the popularity of their books. The financial benefit was, for the most part, enjoyed by the printers and booksellers – what today we refer to as publishers.

The cost of this failure was enormous. As Montaigne wrote, “The witches of my neighborhood are in mortal danger every time some new author comes along and attests to the reality of their visions.”

The demonologists offered no original analysis, no evidence and no witnesses – failing to meet the standards of good scholarship.

In 1677, English chaplain, physician and philosopher John Webster wrote a scathing critique, claiming that most demonologists’ texts were straightforward copy and paste jobs where the authors repeated one another’s lies.

These skeptics also identified something more insidious: the moral responsibility of people spreading the stories.

And concluded they needed “hellebore rather than hemlock”: medicine rather than poison.

Michel de Montaigne - Wikipedia

In 1580, French philosopher Michel de Montaigne visited imprisoned witches;

Johann Weyer: Witches as Melancholics, 1563 | 71 | v2 | The Witchcraft This chapter talks about Johann Weyer, the Dutch demonologist whose account of the possession of the nuns at Wertet. Much of the demonological literature of the

Dutch physician Johann Weyer argued that women accused of witchcraft were suffering from melancholia – what we might now call mental illness – and needed medical treatment, not execution.

A History of Demonology is a History of the World When I reveal that I wrote a book about demonology, I’m invariably asked if I believe that demons are actually real. “Of course, I don’t think that demons are actually real,” is the expected respon…

2. Skeptics fight back

Not everyone bought into the witch hysteria. As early as 1563, dissenting voices emerged – though, notably, most didn’t argue that witches weren’t real. Instead, they questioned the methods used to identify and prosecute them.

Demonology - Wikipedia

As demonologists repeated one another’s spurious claims, an echo chamber of “evidence” was born. The identity of the witch was thus formalized: dangerous and decisively female.