Funny! Also deserved. But wrong…
To quote myself, planting false facts in the information supply may not make people sick like putting poison in the water supply, but it is damaging enough to be recognized as not worth tolerating for the occasional giggle. A year ago, I introduced the Ethics Alarms Web Hoax Scale,inspired by yet another unethical trick by the loathsome Jimmy Kimmel. As it turned out, 2014 was a banner year for web hoaxes, due to the activity of a couple webs sites that only exist to deceive the news media and make every American certain that they shouldn’t trust anything they read, anywhere.
As you know if you’ve read much here, I detest web hoaxes. I’m also not too crazy about those who use them to announce their superiority to the people who were fooled, essentially saying, “It’s harmless, unless you’re not smart enough to get it—like you.” This attitude emboldens and rationalizes for the hoaxers. I’ve fallen for some, usually when a source I trust has preceded me, marring the site with a post based on a lie. I don’t think it’s funny to make others involuntary accessories to deception.
I was reminded of the Web Hoax Scale, which, like the Race-baiting Scale, I want to finalize before making it a permanent part of the Ethics Alarms tool box, when my least favorite Republican Presidential candidate, Rand Paul, launched a fake Hillary Clinton site on Pinterest. It would have been a #1 on the original hoax scale , rated as harmless because no one who had ever heard of Hillary and who could beat my dog at Scrabble would think it was anything but a gag. (Should a hoax that doesn’t and can’t fool anyone qualify as a hoax at all?) I was going to write, however, that in this context, a fake website is inherently unethical whether it is recognized as such or not, and I have reflected that position in the revision of the scale.
Paul’s site crosses the line, barely but clearly, into campaign dirty tricks category. Putting out news releases, statements, and positions that purport, obviously or not, to be those of one’s opponent should be a tactic that makes anyone familiar with the Nixon years or who recalls Ed Muskie weeping in the snow nauseous. This is one of those slippery slopes that shouldn’t be touched: the American voter is too inattentive and gullible as it is. My guess is that an election law banning such things would be unconstitutional—too bad. Watch what the ruthless Clinton team does with Paul’s innovation.
I didn’t write the post because just as I began it, Pinterest, where it was launched, pulled the site, to predictable cheering from Hillary’s fans.
I present, again, the Ethics Alarms Web Hoax Scale, with hoaxes ranked from most ethical to least, lengthened, updated and in draft form, for your critiques before I finalize it:
The Web Hoax Scale
DRAFT
1. Hoaxes successfully designed to be immediately recognized as satire, humor, or parody.
2. Negligent, accidentally, reckless or incompetent hoaxes designed to be recognized by all as satire, humor, or parody.
3. Hoaxes designed to be funny because people believe them.
4. Hoaxes designed to get publicity or be part of an advertising campaign.
5. Hoaxes designed to make those who fall for it look foolish or stupid.
6. Hoaxes designed to spark controversy.
7. Hoaxes to spread misinformation just to do it.
8. Hoaxes designed to get someone else in trouble.
9. #1 level hoaxes used to attack political opponents in a political campaign.
10. Hoaxes designed to spread malicious rumors.
11. Hoaxes designed to defraud.
12. Hoaxes designed to cause panic or public unrest.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack, I’d suggest that item 1 isn’t a hoax at all. Let’s take The Onion as an exemplar of this (which it is, because when it comes to the online world The Onion is not only the original, it’s also the best – it’s consistently funny).. Only the most ignorant and out-of-touch people online would fail to recognize that The Onion is all about humor, parody and satire;
The Onion modernizes things somewhat, certainly, but other than delivery mechanism The Onion is really no different from countless humor magazines that have existed in many nations for well over a century. As you’re probably aware, it started out as a print publication.
If an individual was persuaded by an article in one of those magazines – or The Onion, and I’ve little doubt that it has happened, that reveals ignorance on the part of that reader, not malicious intent on the part of the writer, editor or publisher.
Now there are admittedly a whole bunch of Onion-wannabes that lack the skills of the Onion staff and don’t have the talent to utilize the tongue-in-cheek approach of The Onion. Many of these are comparatively obscure, and some have found themselves in the propagation mode that clearly reflects Item #2. I’d say that the scale from 2 to 10 is pretty reasonable. But #1 doesn’t, IMO, belong – because said content, done well, isn’t a hoax. It actually approaches art.
While number 1 may be easily recognized as satire, humor, or parody by adults, they may not be recognised as such by children, foreigners or historians 100 years in the future, so yes number 1 is definitely a hoax.
Errol, that logic boils down to “because some people are too stupid to understand Chaucer, no one should read Chaucer.”
I’m… going to have to point out another category: Hoaxes that cause those who believe them to harm or endanger others. Examples: Antivaccination hoaxes, risky or dangerous “autism treatments” (see the bleach enema thing)…
You also base your scale more on intent than I would (I’d include abrogation of responsibility in the scale, even if it made it more complex)… but that’s another matter.
Additional category: Hoaxes designed to spread misin”formation for financial gain (see, for instance, Vani Hari, Joseph Mercola, or Mike Adams).
To elaborate on my earlier comment, I would also argue that there’s no point in differentiating between bullshit (in the sense of Frankfurt) and lies in many of these cases — which is the major issue with my earlier comment about intent.
I would also, while discussing health and the like (see “responsiblity”), incorporate an element of the predictable consequences of the hoax: someone writing about medicine or food safety, for instance, is literally risking the lives and health of the people who trust them (the same can be said for someone writing about self-defense techniques or bomb detection). Compare this to, say, someone hoaxing about a fake event in Lake Erie or the “scientific discovery” of a “new moon” orbiting Pluto. In the worst extremes, we get things like the antivaccination hoaxes, people promoting bleach as a cure-all…
Good input—very helpful. Thanks.
I don’t see “antivaccination” as a “hoax”; this is earnestly believed ignorance.
I’m referring to hoaxes pulled off by antivaccine propagandists in order to advance their agenda, of which there have been plenty (the Wakefield study and the so-called “CDC whistleblower” affair, just to name one seminal and one recent).
I would agree with Arthur, especially about The Onion, but I think he fails to realize the absolute ignorance and stupidity of the American public. Satire and parody: what are those? What percentage of the American people can define them, much less see and understand them when they see them?
I think the Scale is an interesting addition to your site, Jack, but have no hope whatsoever that any of them will be recognized by the majority of morons who read the web hoaxes. You can point them out, and should, but it’s a losing battle. Keep on fighting, but only with the hope that some web hoaxes will be pointed out by the mainstream media, which is the only way the readers of those websites might, just might, understand what they didn’t see in the first place.
Would the so called “Ethical Hoax” fall under the category of #1? (An ethical hoax example mentioned here being a chemistry teacher assigning students to look up the dangers of “dihydrogen monoxide”…) this might be a “Category #0”.
Numbers #8 and #10, seem awfully similar, as do #6 and #7; it might be more effective consolidating it to a 10 point scale for ease of reference, with perhaps a super-category for what is currently #12 (a #10A perhaps…)
#6 and #7 have an important distinction to me: #7 is the computer virus analogy, people who want to start rumors for no reason other than the fact that it makes them feel powerful and that their pathetic lives have meaning. #6 is more sinister (I need to reverse them), because its objective is to plant doubt, spark debate…it’s like the Big Lie: Yes, that story about Romney having a secret harem is false, but hmmmm…I wonder what he might be hiding about his Mormon lifestyle?
You’re right about 8 and 10 —too similar, and need to be combined.
My lucky number is 11, by the way.
Ah, the progression of severity is indeed clearer in the reverse.
I know this sounds a bit silly, but what’s the hoax level at which the person passes below the bar of “wouldn’t have them over for dinner”?
I can see it being three because that’s the level at which people are at least trying to take the high road, and just have someone reading it run afoul of Poe’s Law, but it’s somewhere between five and eight where the motives become kind of awful (malicious vs mischevious).
It’s between #2 and #3 for me. I don’t like hoaxes, and I don’t respect hoaxers.
What we call “practical jokes” are part of the definition of hoaxes. Do adult versions of the traditional childhood japes fall into the #1 category: a surruptitiously placed sign on a back; guiding a blindfolded (not blind, that’s another category altogether) person into an other-gendered toilet or brink of an elevator shaft or swimming pool; spaghetti announced as worms or peeled grapes as eyes after the victim has consumed them?
Or could the adjective “juvenile” be added to the #2 category?