The right-wing stuff often has this element of racial fear, even if it is subtle. One of the best examples I can think of was from this otherwise innocuous hoax news website. They make themselves look like a legitimate local news site, although they don’t specify where, of course, and then they steal mugshots from one of those sites that host mugshots, and then they write a story around them that has nothing to do with reality. I saw a steady drumbeat of that over the past year or so, preying on racial fears.

Meyer: You saw the number of stories like that go up over the past year?

Binkowski: Yeah. Big time. I saw that pick up a lot last year.

Meyer: Is there advice you have for readers about how to recognize fake news?

If it arouses an emotional response is you—if you see the headline and go, I can’t believe this, I’m so angry—then it’s probably something you need to check against something else. News is going to be rage-inducing, it’s going to be terrifying, it will make you happy. But if you have that visceral a response to something, then it is written specifically to arouse that response so you’ll share it. Just say no.

But I really don’t want to make this the responsibility of the person reading the news, when there are so many things that have been broken down and atomized and made into individual responsibility that should be a collective responsibility. [News] should be a public service, and that is how public services exist and maintain themselves. And it should be seen as such.

Meyer: Do you have a fairly dim view of human gullibility, because you sit around and look at this stuff all day?

Binkowski: You know, I actually don’t. Sometimes my faith in humanity is severely challenged. I actually think that people in the aggregate, even now, are smart. I think humans are smart. I really do. I realize that we’re in a generally discouraging moment in history, but I don’t think people are stupid, and I don’t think people are necessarily gullible.

Have you ever read The Gift of Fear? The gist of it is, trust your instincts because normally they’re picking up on things that you aren’t consciously noticing. It’s an interesting book, and it’s generally about crime and rape and violence.

I’ve always wondered why we slow down for car accidents. And the author of the book, [Gavin de Becker,] says, We always slow down for car accidents out of an ancient impulse, which is that humans want to learn. That’s why we developed these enormous brains. People always want to learn.

And I thought, you know what, that’s true. Even people who are sending around these stupid stories that are complete BS, they would latch onto actual news, not conspiracy theories, if there was more actual news out there. I think that people are going about the fake news issue the wrong way. Pinching off fake news isn’t the answer. The answer is flooding it with actual news. And that way, people will continue looking for information, and they will find vetted, nuanced, contextual, in-depth information.