In the red corner
Social media has supercharged our access to information, whether it’s highly localised through a community Facebook group or the instantaneous spread of global news through Twitter.
But the network is threatened by unreliable information. While most is spread unknowingly, some is spread on purpose to mislead, subvert and destabilise certain communities.
Like my friends in South Auckland, my social feeds were inundated with videos of Māori and Pasifika people with spoons stuck to their skin last year.
The first video claimed magnetic skin was a reaction caused by vaccinations. There is no such side effect, but the videos continued to do the rounds within my community.
Propaganda like this is not new. What is different is how social network algorithms can weaponise misinformation to continuously bombard us, based on what our peers like and interact with.
Within a global health pandemic, people need to have access to accurate and reliable information at all times.
In its report The Edge of the Infodemic, the Classification Office found that
82 per cent of New Zealanders were worried about how commonly people were being exposed to misinformation, and felt that those levels of exposure were increasingly impacting on people’s views.
Most of them also want action taken on this, although there is less consensus on how that should be achieved: whether it is by Government or by social media entities, among other solutions.
Major social media companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have all taken steps to stem the tide of misinformation but there’s still a need to do better.
We must look at the tools we have in front of us. Several Government departments and agencies are working hard to manage and address the flow of misinformation.
The Classification Office has some oversight in this space when it comes to ‘‘publications’’, but that term has an obscure legal definition that can be difficult to define. Enforcement of Classification Office decisions falls to the Department of Internal Affairs and the police. The Electoral Commission can act, but only on information about enrolling and voting.
They’re all focused on protecting whānau and communities and equally committed to tackling the misinformation that exists, and it’s clear that to continue our work to protect lives and livelihoods we must continue to fight misinformation.