The State Duma attended to network “factories of lies”: schoolchildren are being persecuted

Deputies worry that teenagers are subjected to “destructive Russophobia”

First Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Education MP Yana Lantratova addressed the Minister of Education with the initiative to conduct media literacy classes in schools. But not simple, but anti-fake. The deputy believes that schools need methods to distinguish reliable information from “Russophobic and destructive” information. In a word, it is necessary to teach children to separate the wheat from the chaff, lies from the truth and fakes from reality in a wide network field.

The development of such methods, according to the deputy, should be done by “interested structures” under the control of the parental and civil society. And then, they say, in unfriendly online communities and countries, they have long been teaching children to read the “Kremlin narrative”, why are we worse? Enough bast shoes slurp, it’s time for schoolchildren and teachers to think about network security.

As an example of hostile influence on children, the deputy cited a case in the Moscow region, where three eighth-graders were preparing a sabotage on the railway near the Lesnoy Gorodok station (they set fire to a relay cabinet). Teenagers allegedly ordered a crime in one of the Russian social networks for 10 thousand rubles. True, it is not clear how she knows this – while the investigation is ongoing, and no interim results have been disclosed.

“Fake messaging has been around for a long time,” says cybersecurity expert Vladimir Belkin. – For example, about purebred puppies that will soon be euthanized – this is one of the oldest online fakes, it is at least 10 years old … Or about poisoned syringes in the sandbox, about some other horrors. Opinions differ about who sends these messages and why. Here in Tatarstan, not so long ago, three local citizens were detained, who launched a message on a social network about banking panic among the population. So that everyone runs to withdraw cash. Without political overtones or even material gain, as it turned out, they just wanted to have fun. The most recent example of such mailings is messages about some former Wagner PMC fighters on the streets of Moscow. But the fake came out clumsy, no one fell for it and it did not become viral.

Belkin says that fake messages have a number of distinguishing features that make them easy to recognize. The message is usually not tied to a place and time. If any contacts are specified, such as a phone number or a street name, they are invalid. Big screaming headlines with a bunch of exclamation marks, excessive emotionality of the test should also be alarming. The introductory words “I can’t be silent” or “I want to report something important …” are characteristic. Blurry photos, the wrong date (or none), the lack of a link to the news source complete the picture. And pedaling such painful and sensitive points as children, animals, health, the elderly. Sometimes money.

In order to distinguish fake messages from reliable ones, a special course is not needed, experts say. It is enough to remember a few simple rules and learn how to do elementary fact-checking (fact checking) in a search engine. Preferably before putting your finger over the “repost” line.

As for the political motives for such mailings, the State Duma attaches great importance to them. “As a rule, their goal is to scare, confuse people, cause panic,” says Lantartova. “Fake factories are spreading information that they are trying to discredit the actions of the Russian authorities.”

The Minister of Education noted that “many guys are gullible” and they should be protected from online scammers and liars. However, the head of the department recalled that there is already such a topic in “Conversations about the Important”. And digital literacy is included in the school curriculum, where there is “Informatics” and “Workshop on Informatics”.

“Russian schools do not have a single end-to-end system for teaching information security to children,” says Irina Abankina, leading expert, director of the HSE Institute of Education. – In general, the problem with fakes is global, it exists all over the world. The point here is not the confrontation of the worlds, but the fact that everyone is immersed in the media space. Abankina emphasizes that it is necessary to teach people to better navigate the information space and develop critical thinking.