By
One of the most prominent stories to come out of Donald Trump’s election is the proliferation of what has come to be known as
“fake news.” While the term itself is rather hard to define depending on who
you talk to—there are those who now consider any mainstream media to be “fake
news”—the spreading of demonstrable falsehoods via social media appears to be a
phenomenon that shows no signs of going away anytime soon.
Wide exposure
Whether the abundance of bogus news that
arose during the election season was meant to sway the weak-of-mind or purely
to generate ad revenue, one conclusion is inescapable: Facebook, Twitter, and
other social media channels played a pivotal role in disseminating the false
content. Considering a majority of American adults are on Facebook, and
two-thirds of Facebook users get their news from the site, the potential impact of fake news is clear, and
troubling.
Even Pope Francis has chimed in. And,
no, not in regard to the fake story “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald
Trump,” which had no factual basis. In an interview with the Belgian Catholic weekly Tertio, the pontiff slammed
media organizations for focusing on scandals and promoting phony news. He even
went so far as to compare such behavior to coprophilia, an abnormal pleasure in feces and
defecation.
In early December a few weeks after the
election, fake news provoked one man into firing an assault-style rifle in a kid-friendly pizza place in Washington, D.C. The
shooter (luckily, no one was harmed) drove from North Carolina to Comet Ping
Pong to free children allegedly held captive as part of a pedophilia ring
linked to Hillary Clinton.
The unfounded rumor which the shooter
was acting on—that sexually abused children were being held captive in the
pizzeria’s basement—was tweeted more than 6,000 times, quickly spread on other
social media channels, and was repeated by far-right talk-show host Alex Jones. But there were
no captive children. There was no pedophilia ring. There was not even a
basement. And Hillary Clinton was most definitely not involved.
Google, too, has been criticized, for
elevating fake news in its search results. Business
Insiderreported that recent changes in Google’s algorithm rewards
search results based on the likelihood a user will click on them. As a result,
user behavior influences how content is ranked. And frequently, widely shared
fake news stories benefit from the ranking algorithm. Google’s algorithm also
elevated bogus news in its “In the news” section, which since has been discontinued.
How can fake news
even be legal?
Quite simply, there is no legal
obligation to tell the truth. We are free to lie to each other, and to spread
falsehoods. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression, which includes news
stories, even if false. Only if the fake news strays into defamation—a false statement purporting to be fact that damages
another person’s reputation—then legal action can be taken.
In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Derigan Silver, a
professor of media, First Amendment and Internet law at the University of
Denver, noted the debate on freedom of expression may be evolving.
“One of the ideas behind the First
Amendment is that we believe in something called the marketplace of ideas: that
if you let ‘truthhood’ and falsity battle in the marketplace of ideas, that
truth will eventually win, that we have an assumption that people are rational,
and they can determine truth from falsity,” he said. However, Silver added,
“Are we in a situation now where truth no longer matters, and people are not
able to sort these things out?”
Internet giants
respond
Facebook and Google are now trying to
deter the spread of fake news. Facebook’s response began with staffers forming an unofficial task force to
address the problem. Then Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had initially
rejected the idea that fake news could sway voters, had a change of heart, and
on December 15, Facebook announced several policy changes, most notably
that it will use external fact-checkers to review news stories users flag as
fake.
If the fact-checkers concur, Facebook will tag the item as “Disputed by 3rd Parties,” letting users
know that independent fact-checkers have deemed the story unreliable. Google,
meanwhile, has not only removed fake news from its news feed, it is tackling
the profitability of fake news sites by banning such sites from using its
online advertising service.
And Slate has created a Chrome extension called “This is Fake,” which identifies fabricated news in Facebook feeds
and enables users to alert their friends when they share a fake news story. The Slate tool, however, is not dependent on an
algorithm; Slate staffers moderate a list of reputable news sources, which they
update based on the “This is Fake” data collected.
These actions might help, but there’s
still a burden on social media users to cast a critical eye on what they choose
to disseminate. When sharing stories is as easy as the click of an icon,
collective responsibility for the accuracy of what we send is the best defense
against misinformation.
No comments:
Post a Comment