You have been warned
Occasional Reading the news: how does one separate the fake from the credible?
TIL L the early 2000s, the Internet was a decentralised, anarchic and mostly unregu - lated platform. Online-only news publications were rare. News came from traditional sou rces, su ch as news agencies or publishing houses, that posted news on their homepages, in addition to other channels like TV or newspapers.
The news business faced significant hurdles. It needed capital, expertise and technology. However, the emergence and rapid penetration of social media and the Web have drastically lowered the entry barriers for developing and sharing contents, inclu ding news.
News consu mption is increasingly driven by online-only news publishing, mainly shared throu gh social media. While publishing and sharing information, inclu ding news, has become easy, it has also created challenges. Fake news is gradu ally emerging as one su ch menace.
At the most fu ndamental level and in the cu rrent context, it comes in the form of active misinformation packaged to appear as credible news.
It can also be news published on blogs and websites by non-specialised, often dubiou s sou rces, intended to misinform, misgu ide and spread propaganda. Fake news has the potential to stifle the state and, by extension, democratic institu tions and governance.
In this information age, fake news has become a low-cost and extremely effective instru ment of waging an unethical war against powerfu l institu tional opponents, spread by users who share it believing it to be genu ine.
With a u ser base of over 1.7 billion, Facebook is the host of more fake news than any other social media platform. A fake report of a nuclear threat by Israeli defense minister misled his Pakistani cou nterpart into retweeting the report and reminding him that Pakistan, too, is a nuclear power.
How does one separate the fake from the credible? Many respected news publications use a specific template on their websites. A fake news generator creates hoax headlines, graphics and content by using a template identical to that of credible news providers.
Fodey.com, for example, creates fake news using newspaper clipping templates. Breakyou rownnews.com has a predefined template for creating any breaking news with numerous sharing options.
Distingu ishing the fake from the real can be difficu lt, especially if it appears like it is coming from a prestigiou s news sou rce.
Culpable social media platforms
Social media platforms are at the centre of the fake news debate and its regu lation. According to research carried out by the Pew Research Center, 62% of US adults get their news throu gh social media and two thirds of Facebook users consu me news on its platform.
Given Facebook’s billion-plu s user base with high engagement rates, the accu racy of the content on its newsfeed is critical. For Facebook to attract more publishers, it is essential that credible content is not overshadowed by sensational fake news. While social media has made everyone a content developer and publisher, detection and cu rbing of fake news and its sharing is technically complex. L aws on free expression and speech also pose an ethical challenge when controlling what is published and shared.
During the recent 2016 US election campaign, Facebook users learnt that the pope had endorsed Tru mp, that a Democratic operative was murdered after agreeing to testify against Hilary Clinton and that Bill Clinton raped a 13-year-old girl. These are completely bogu s news stories.
In Nepal, after the 2015 earthqu ake, there were several fake news stories predicting earthqu akes in different parts of the cou ntry – it is technically impossible to do that. Stories like these thrive on social media platforms becau se their algorithms prioritise engagement and an effective way to engage readers is to prioritise the most shared stories.
But why publish fake news? Who is behind it and what do they gain? The answer is seldom commercial and is often related to spreading misinformation for political gains. German chancellor Angela Merkel has rightly argu ed that public opinion is manipulated on the Internet and that opinions are being formed in a completely new media environment entirely different from how it was 25 years ago.
A threat to social order
Fake sites, bots, trolls and even some greedy online-only news providers are a threat to social order. While individu al creation and sharing of content have numerous benefits, for example in times of disasters, the same platform being used to transmit propaganda poses grave challenges to stability and governance.
It is widely believed that the misinformation indu stry may have influ enced the outcome of the US presidential election. The data mining giants, Facebook and Google, whose revenu es depend on advertisements, moved to cu t ad revenu e to bogu s sites after the election. Facebook has repeatedly vowed to work on stronger detection and easier reporting of misinformation.
A major challenge for regu lation is their impact on credible content and free speech. But some steps need to be taken, considering cu rrent developments. The German government is planning to levy fines if Facebook does not remove offensive content. However, what cou ld be offensive for a government is again a matter of interpretation and there- fore a complex issu e.
Fighting the threat
So how do we fight this menace and threat to democratic order? Some research suggests that banning fake news entirely will not work as it may filter real content. However, some approaches can indeed be helpful. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm decides the order in which news stories are shown to users.
Giving priority to credible news sources in the newsfeed algorithm could improve the average quality of news. Dubious stories can be presented in a different way. Right now, when users post a link, Facebook expands that into a “card”, showing an image, a headline, and a short sentence describing the article. This format is standard, so a New York Times article is presented in the same way as an article from a no-name blog. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook could hire a team of fact checkers to examine the most widely shared stories. They could add an icon to stories to mark that they are real.
The threat of fake news is real and multidimensional. Curbing it requ ires global cooperation, stringent regu lation and a robu st incentive design to enable the social media giants to act on this. – The Kathmandu Post (Nepal)/Asia News Network
Anup Kumar and Dikshya Singh are software engineers; Avinash Gupta is an economic analyst.