What is fake news?

Fake news is not a new phenomenon, but its prevalence in everyday lives is. In fact, it has been discussed so frequently in today’s culture that ‘fake news’ was named 2016 Word of the Year by Macquarie Dictionary, despite not having an official dictionary entry.

Understanding exactly what fake news looks like is important. There is a difference between false articles produced deliberately and those that are just poorly researched. Most fake news sites purposefully create content that contains false information, often in the form of satire. Others are more malicious, and often create these stories for political or personal gains.

With the growth of social media, it’s been spreading like wildfire.

Why is it so bad?

Before the social media boom, fake news was around but easily avoidable. Now, fake news outlets have a digital platform to spread their stories, and have come to look very similar in look and feel to legitimate ones. Appearing amongst real posts in news feeds,  fake news stories are convincing people that they are the real deal. So much so, they are being shared far more often than many real stories.

This became a particularly concerning issue in the months leading up to the US Presidential Election. People from all over the world were sharing stories with false accusations against both parties. The most outrageous? That Pope Francis formally endorsed Donald Trump. That might sound ridiculous to some, but shockingly, it was believed by many.

Towards the end of 2016, many people called for action to be taken against social media platforms hosting these stories. An open letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the social media giant “start an open conversation on the principles that could underpin a more accurate news ecosystem on its News Feed”. It was signed by many large, independent fact checking organisations, and was forefronted by FactCheck.org. Although Zuckerberg responded to the backlash, he did so very delicately with the oblique “identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated” and whilst Facebook will be making efforts to debunk fake news stories, they needed to tread with caution.

What can be done about it?

If fake news continues to spread as quickly as it is doing so, greater action needs to be taken. But what can social media platforms actually do to combat the issue? Start taking responsibility is one answer.

Tom Bourlet, a Social Media Marketing Analyst, thinks social media platforms need to focus on their algorithms:

Others believe readers need to be encouraged to rely upon locally sourced media for the truth:

and many media outlets want to work more closely with fact-checking organisations to validate the content they produce:

What do you think should be done to combat fake news? Reveal your real thoughts in a tweet to us @24fingers.

The post The truth about fake news first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post The truth about fake news appeared first on 24 fingers.

Time to Face the Truth

Mark Zuckerberg has made a promise to end fake news on Facebook. The social media platform has been under a great deal of criticism – particularly over the recent US election – for allowing fake, misleading and untruthful news articles to be promoted and circulated on it’s site. In a statement made on a Facebook post (naturally), Zuckerberg shared some post-election thoughts:

“Our goal is to show people the content they will find most meaningful, and people want accurate news. We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here. We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further.

This is an area where I believe we must proceed very carefully though. Identifying the “truth” is complicated. While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, often gets the basic idea right but some details wrong or omitted. An even greater volume of stories express an opinion that many will disagree with and flag as incorrect even when factual. I am confident we can find ways for our community to tell us what content is most meaningful, but I believe we must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves.”

You can read the full post here.

Spread love, not hate

Only lovebirds tweeting here.

Following on a similar form to Instagram, Twitter has now added a function that will allow users to block certain words or phrases from their notifications. Not only will this help high profile users cut down the number of notifications they may receive, but will help users avoid hateful from trolls.

Whilst avoiding the matter rather than tackling it head on isn’t the best way of dealing with negativity and bullying online, at least Twitter are making a step in the right direction.

If you want to mute certain words yourself, simply head to your Twitter settings, select ‘Notifications’ and then ‘Muted words’. You can mute one word, phrase, @username or hashtag at a time.

 

Snapchat’s goes Squared-Eyed

Foursquared-eyed, that is. Snapchat has just completed a deal with local ‘search-and-discovery’ app, Foursquare. By using location information from the app, Snapchat will now be able to deliver much more specific advertisements depending on where you are in the world. 

This is great news for smaller businesses looking to take advantage of the geofilters on Snapchat, as they will now narrow down to even more precise areas – reportedly as small as a specific building.

 

LinkedIn may seize business in Russia

Russia may be notoriously known for its spies, but it seems that they are more concerned with who is spying on them at the moment. The Russian court has made a decision to potentially ban LinkedIn from being used within the country, over issues concerning data protection.

The controversial ruling comes and LinkedIn failed to comply with law to protect Russian citizen’s personal data, as the it’s servers are held outside the country. Following the ruling, a spokesperson for LinkedIn said:

“The Russian court’s decision has the potential to deny access to LinkedIn for the millions of members we have in Russia and the companies that use LinkedIn to grow their businesses. We remain interested in a meeting with Roskomnadzor to discuss their data localization request,” it said.

The post Time to Face the Truth first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Time to Face the Truth appeared first on 24 fingers.