It’s time to switch off the fake news and do something more interesting instead, says Jon Honeyball

You may just possibly have noticed that there’s a lot of news floating around about news right now, and in particular how accurate it is. Mr Trump’s team frequently claims that all the news outlets aren’t telling the truth, and that this is a bad thing that must be punished. Part of their communication strategy is to bypass the mainstream and go straight to the end user via Twitter, with typical directness.

The inevitable result, like a flamethrower in a dry forest, is a firestorm about “what exactly is truth in news?”

It’s a fascinating subject, because it goes to the heart of why we have channels through which we consume such information. In the past, a news organisation was the only way in which news, and opinion about that news, was collected together and then disseminated to its audience. Other than these few news outlets, there was no other meaningful route from the event to the reader.

We had to trust the news organisation because we had no other way to verify or invalidate the stories. Out of this came the underlying belief by news organisations that they were special, or “blessed” to deliver news and opinion. You might think that this view applies to this very organ, but it doesn’t – we deliver opinion and insight and analysis, which is a somewhat different thing.

Then along comes the internet and all the rules change. Fortunately for the news organisations, they have huge momentum and infrastructure. But, over the past decade, this momentum has been chipped away. It’s not been helped by some news organisations clearly having “agendas”, be they political, social, financial or a mix of all three. In attracting those of similar views, they inevitably push away those of dissimilar views. Over time, this leads to a fractured landscape where otherwise reputable organs are viewed as unreliable.

Such an outcome naturally plays straight into the hands of the social media agents. And hence the rise of the “influencers”, people who just say (and video) whatever they want and are paid to get a sponsored message over to thousands or millions of consumers.

Unfortunately, the task facing the end user has got a lot harder. Not so many years ago, it was relatively easy to decide over time whether you trusted BBC News, The Times, The Daily Mail, CNN or whatever. Today, when faced with thousands of potential feeds, curation has become impossible due to the sheer volume of “stuff” out there: real-time tweets, posts, blogs, YouTube channels and so forth.

So we have turned to “platforms”, many of which are effectively crowdsourced and crowd-managed. On Facebook, I have many friends, but they are real friends. I keep out “acquaintances” and colleagues because I want to control the flow of information – and to ensure it comes from a relatively reputable source

This works, most of the time. However, it is still far too easy for what appears to be official or trustworthy information to circle the world in a few minutes before anyone has bothered to check if it’s real. Trusting sources without verification or validation is the underlying issue. You might be thinking, post-Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto, that Facebook has the answer. That its mix of machine learning, grandiose thinking and new emphasis on surfacing shared posts after people have actually read them – rather than just the headline – is all you need.

No. We can’t rely on Silicon Valley algorithms. We must all apply a little more fact-checking to the things we read, consume and pass on. No amount of “All facts here are checked!” banners and symbols will help. In fact, quite the opposite. Such devices make it even easier for partial truths to be “accredited” and, consequently, gain a reputation of quality that is not deserved.

Maybe there’s no such thing as truth. It’s entirely possible that there are just opinions at a point in time, and that everything has a spin, a bias or a perspective. It all depends on how you look at things. Which means that everything is a bit like Schrödinger’s cat.

So how do you survive? The best solution might just be to ignore it all. That sounds a little drastic, but if I look at the amount of heat, anger, vitriol and other emotions created by the election of Mr Trump on my Facebook feed, it would be hard not to be swept up by the tidal wave of it all. Maybe there is such a thing as too much news – if you can’t contain it, trust it, validate it, and make reasoned judgements about it, then why read it at all?

Faced with thousands of feeds, curation has become impossible due to the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ out there