World View The Rising Wave of Tech-fuelled Fake News

Government should constantly review the laws to protect people from spreaders of falsehoods. Importantly, it should enforce those laws to retain trust on technology and nurture credible news sources.

With the steep rise of WhatsApp,

Twitter and Facebook as a huge force for connecting billions of people, misinformation, hoaxes and lies have found a fertile ground on which to thrive. Kenyans, like the rest of the world, are often lost in the fog of fake news.

It is sometimes nearly impossible to tell fact from forgery. This causes mistrust information until credible sources carry it. For example, when it first occurred that Mr Kalonzo Musyoka had bolted out of the much publicised “swearing in” event, my immediate instinct was that this was another dose of fake news, until the mainstream media reported it.

Why was I skeptical? Because in a span of 48 hours , I had seen a memo on social media purported to be from Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i claiming the government had issued a curfew in Nairobi.

That memo came barely hours after another one alleged to have come from Chief Justice David Maraga warning judges against swearing in Raila, or they could face unspecified punishment. It turned out that these two memos, like many others doing the rounds, were fake.

PANIC

Sometimes misinformation like these spread out of panic, sometimes out of malice, and sometimes deliberate manipulation, in which an individual, group or government pays people to convey their message. Whatever the motive, falsehoods and facts spread the same way, through the social media conveyer belt.

This trend is concerning because it splits the world into two. We are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the off-line.

Worse, modern technology gives fraudsters the fuel and platforms to instantly access millions of people.

These kinds of digital, ethical problems represent a defining challenge of the 21st century. They include breaches of privacy, of security and safety, of trust, of fundamental human rights, as well as the possibility of exploitation, discrimination, manipulation, propaganda, populism, tribalism, violence and hate speech.

DIGITAL INFORMATION

The near instantaneous spread of digital information means that some of the costs of misinformation may be hard to reverse, especially when confidence and trust are undermined.

The sad news is that real news is not coming back in any tangible way soon, or retaining its position as a driver of opinion in a world where there is a growing population that does not solely rely on professionally reported news sources. So much news is filtered via social media.

And as real news recedes, fake news will continue to thrive and our biggest challenge will be to find a new way to tame the rising tide.

So, what is the solution? The government should create an open and independent advisory forum to bring all stakeholders together to participate in a dialogue, decisionmaking and implementation of solutions to common ethical problems brought about by the information revolution.

FALSEHOODS

It should constantly review the laws to protect people from spreaders of falsehoods. Importantly, it should enforce those laws to retain trust on technology and nurture credible news sources.

The tech industry can and must do better to ensure the internet meets its potential to support individuals’ wellbeing and social good. It should use its intelligent algorithms and human expertise to glean and clean out such information as it is uploaded. As hard as it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the rule of thumb is; if it is too good to be true, it probably is false. If the mainstream media is not reporting it, it is most likely junk. If it’s garbage, don’t partake in spreading it.