Truth be told ... but check it first

It’s a problem as old as the pyramids, yet it’s so easy to solve: Just check before you share, people!

LONG-time readers of this column know that apart from double parking and Aston Villa losing games, one thing that really gets me is when people send viral messages without checking if they’re true first. I mean, am I wrong that if you’re going to forward a message about how the retrograde of Mars heralds the end of the world, you should maybe spend five minutes checking it first?

At times, the originator will protest saying they didn’t mean any harm, they got it from a trusted friend, and better to be safe than sorry. To which, I reply, much better to be correct, safe and not sorry. But the junk continues to land on my digital doorstep, despite the technology like spam filters.

I mean, I’m not sure why I expect otherwise; it’s been going on for a long time. Since the Ancient Egyptian period people have been getting messages that advocated readers to make a personal copy for themselves as a form of good prayers. Assuming the perpetual nature of well-intended aunties and uncles, I can imagine one of them making a dozen copies to be sent to kin near and afar “for good luck”. And if a nephew questioned the provenance of such a document, I’m sure the answer would be “By the pharaohs, I was given it by a friend, true or not, I don’t know. But no harm sending it on, right?”

I’m not the only one who thinks these kinds of messages are harmful. Their previous incarnations were called chain letters, spam, or junk mail, and now they are simply “fake news” and are heralded as the downfall of democracy.

But what exactly is “fake news”? Simply put, they are stories that look as if they come from legitimate news sources, but they are false.

This is not new stuff. “Yellow journalism” was what we used to call sensationalistic news articles that were barely supported by research, designed to attract people’s attention to sell more papers. But the difference now is that viral news spreads faster and looks more personalised than before. You are not reading a news article about bigfoot in a newspaper full of ridiculous headlines; you are reading something shared to you by a friend whom you trust.

Now, everything has been recoloured again by the revelations of what a company called Cambridge Analytica has been doing in elections around the world. They have been analysing users on Facebook to determine those who would be most susceptible to messages in order to get them to vote for the right candidate and – more importantly – galvanise them to share that message with other friends on their network.

In principle, a democracy thrives when their citizens make informed choices. You need to understand what the candidates stand for, and how the stances they take can impact issues that affect you and your fellow citizens. Previously, there used to be an idea that the more information there was out there, the better the choice voters would make.

However, fake news muddies the waters. The choices you are making now are not based on facts – your basis for voting is sullied.

One important point to note is that the news doesn’t seem fake to those who pass it on. This may seem ridiculous given the sensationalistic nature of the content – if it’s too good (or horrible) to be true, it probably isn’t. Unfortunately it’s not easy to discern.

A recent study carried out by Stanford’s Graduate School of Education found that despite being the so-called children of the information age, many had difficulty sorting out real news from the fake.

For example, students were asked to evaluate two Facebook posts announcing Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. Only a quarter of the students recognised that a blue tick next to the source meant that it was one verified by Facebook, and the other was an impersonator. To make it worse, over 30% thought that the fake account was more trustworthy because of “key graphic elements” that it included, ie it looked prettier.

So it looks like people need help telling the difference.

The method I have long advocated is to educate the user through sites like snopes.com and factcheck.org. Make the effort for yourself to learn what is right and wrong.

The problem is, of course, there are plenty of people who find it easier to hit share than to check the content. As I have written before, fact-checking is hard and complicated (tinyurl.com/ star2-phony).

Another method is to rely on technology to discover and manage fake news, much like how modern e-mail systems handle spam. The problem with this is that companies who do this are accused of “censoring” the Internet. And a determined friend will find a way to share some piece of amazing news no matter the obstacles.

Thirdly – and this is where Malaysia is right now – is that we punish those who irresponsibly share fake news. Thus the tabling of the “Anti-Fake News Bill 2018” in the Malaysian Parliament recently.

In principle, I like this. I like the idea that if a case comes to courts, then unsubstantiated claims will be debated, presumably using facts and counter-facts, and logic and analysis, and the truth will be laid bare for the world to see.

Then I can report all those uncles and aunties of mine that keep sharing with me these claims of how the movement of another planet means the end of our world, or why it’s important which booth we go to check our ID on voting day, or how news published two years ago is now “BREAKING NEWS!” again.

Not that I want them to go to jail for 10 years or pay half a million ringgit in fines, but I would like them to write me an apology for not checking something first before forwarding it. That would be justice for me.

Logic is the antithesis of emotion but mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi’s theory is that people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at star2@thestar.com.my.

I would like them to write me an apology for not checking something first before forwarding it. That would be justice for me.