Thanks to fake news, does the truth matter to us any more?

We are all by now familiar with the concept of “fake news” – but also, seemingly, becoming more relaxed about it. Lately, I’ve noticed a change in our transmission of false information. Even once-respectable commentators seem increasingly unworried about the authenticity of what they circulate so long as the message appears benign or chimes with their existing world-view.

I felt a prickle of unease, for example, when I first saw that defiant notice apparently written by a Tube worker at Westminster station after the Westminster Bridge terror attack: “All terrorists are politely reminded that THIS IS LONDON and whatever you do to us we will drink tea and jolly well carry on. Thank you.” It was in fact created by an online Tube sign generator, yet was widely shared as if authentic, read out on the Today programme, and even approvingly quoted in the House of Commons.

I can see why it appealed, but it was the perceived context that lent the message its power, and that was fraudulent. Some commentators, such as the BBC’S Nick Robinson, later corrected the source, but most people will remain unenlightened.

Since then, there have been more hot-button circulations, less harmless in intent. I recently lost count of the times that photoshopped images of loyalist paramilitary murals – tweaked to include images of the DUP alongside the UDA – were circulated by outraged commentators who never paused to query the accuracy, because it fitted snugly with their preconceptions.

Yet opinions should be determined by facts, not “facts” falsely created to illustrate opinions. If you help to create a world in which the latter process is widespread, one day it will also devour you.

Then there was this week’s viral fake of a tabloid front page telling Theresa May to “Go Now,” shared by Guardian writer Owen Jones and George Galloway, among others.

We can all get caught out by fake news, but I suspect that when it comes to social media, people would rather be fast and wrong with an image than be slow and right.

It doesn’t bode well.

‘I suspect that people would rather be fast and wrong than be slow and right’