During the last US election, 18-year olds in the Macedonian town of Veles were posting fake news online, earning $7,000 a week using three tools. A fake news site, a Facebook page, and a Google AdSense account. They wrote an article, “Thousands of Hillary Votes Found in Ohio Warehouse”, days before the election on their news site and used a bot army to make it trend on the Google search engine, all while earning money from the ads Google would post on their fake news site.
What’s even more surprising is that neither of these young Macedonians cares about Donald Trump nor do they have any political stake in the US presidential election. They used political stories to generate traffic to their site and in turn get money. “
This sheds light on some of the great weaknesses of Internet firms in the past two decades that has had little attention until the recent elections and had me question the basic idea of reality. It is true that technology platform companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter have enabled many activities and capabilities, but they are yet to realize the innumerable ways by which millions of users will use their sites.
Fake news, images and videos, and messages encouraging terror networks are some of the results of a connected society brought to us by technology platforms that are foreseen still by majority of the population. We are yet to discover how
• people and organizations will use the already existing platforms
• what new technologies could become available in the near future
• and the innovative uses they would be put to.
To understand the fake news, we must understand the underlying causes- and technology might be a major one. The evolution of the internet and social media has led to monetization of viewing habits and news feed. The ease of setting up websites and the monetization offered by the internet advertising seems to have led to the burgeoning of the fake news site, operated by people (18-year olds, in the case of Macedonia) purely for financial gains without realizing the disruption it causes.
The advent of artificial intelligence has likely paved ways to create realistic fake audio and video.
Raw, unfiltered quality of news is now abandoned, and algorithms are used to curate news feed, producing something that feels much more comfortable and familiar. And why do we fall for it?
It is because of our confirmation bias. We as humans tend to seek out information that confirms what we believe in. In this process, we often turn a blind eye to facts that contradict our beliefs. The public is happy hearing what confirms their views. Taking advantage of this, technological platforms like Facebook are likely to curate news feeds and give users what they want to keep them from looking away. So, someone who thinks Clinton to be horrible might see more of that on their Facebook feed.
source: https://www.statista.com/chart/7153/most-americans-believe-fake-news-headlines/
As a result, leaders of technology companies such as Google and Facebook have pledged to fight fake news using reputed third-party fact-checking organizations and by investing resources with the goal to disincentive fake news purveyors. Technology alone won’t help. What we require is a multi-pr0longed solution involving technology, education, and policy. We need to train young minds to examine what we see online with a more critical eye which is an important part of media literacy in the digital age.
I strongly believe that the internet and technological advancement has increased our access to information and answers. It has connected people in all corners of the world. On a whole it is positive. But these fundamental flaws are to be addressed.
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It is so true, that social media sites are flooded with a lot of fake news all over. With the introduction of new technologies and more creative minds, people seem to make all these fake news seem so true and all this for monetary gains alone.
Nice work Manju.
It is so true how much fake news has clouded the internet and how these people creating fake news are using platforms like facebook, twitter to create benefits for themselves. Turns out, it is hard for us everyday people to differentiate between what is fake and what is real !
Good piece of writing Manju,it could use a few more examples of how fake news has impacted people and their decisions. But overall an intriguing topic and well written.