Facebook’s Fight against Fake News

Facebook recently announced that it would trial a ‘context’ button that would help its users identify fake news.

Source: Truly Deeply

Following Mark Zuckerberg’s questioning by the US Congress, Facebook launched a campaign to address concerns against data misuse and the spread of misinformation. The new ‘context’ button is their latest move in the fight against fake news.

The feature, which rolled out in the US and UK, will make its way to Australian users. The button will appear on posts, and will give details about the publisher (such as their Wikipedia page), what posts the publisher has previously shared, and which friends have shared the article. In cases where there is no Wikipedia entry, it will indicate that information is unavailable, which will also be helpful context.

So how helpful is this?

Giving people quick and easy access to contextual information that can help them evaluate articles is definitely a step in the right direction. However, Facebook’s personalised newsfeed acts as a filter bubble, or echo chamber. For example, if I believed in aliens, and Facebook knows this because I’ve like a bunch of pages and posts about aliens. My entire newsfeed will reflect what I like, and that context button won’t matter because I’ve already decided on what I believe in before I’ve even clicked on that information.

*X-Files theme intensifies*

Whatever we already see on our newsfeed is information that is already tailored for us, and a context button might not be all that helpful if we live in an echo chamber.

 

 

-Maria

 

When was the last time you logged onto Facebook and got out in less than 5 min?

A thought occurred to me the other day, being a 90s baby, I’ve never known life without the internet and split-second information acquisition. What are the latest fashion trends? How long will Trump be in office for? Where can I get a bagel? Along with our ability to acquire pieces of mostly inconsequential data, we have the ability to access almost any piece of entertainment, a feat that was inconceivable before. Now, what’s the side effect?

Distraction 

Ask yourself this: when was the last time you logged onto Facebook and got out in less than five minutes?

If you’re anything like me, the answer is not recently. All those Memes waiting to be tagged and videos to be watched, it seems we can’t help ourselves but get distracted.

People in my generation are so bombarded with so much information and news on the internet that we cannot fully appreciate what we consume. What are we actually contributing? Is this why fake news has grown so exponentially?

Tristan Harris the founder of the non-profit organisation ‘Time Well Spent‘ has some good food for thought.

Here’s his motive and what he says: “With Time Well Spent, we want technology that cares about helping us spend our time, and our lives, well – not seducing us into the most screen time, always-on interruptions or distractions”

This naturally aligns with fake news, we want to be able to trust the media, trust what we read and not be seduced to click-bait sensationalised articles for monetary gains. Which hurts civilization more: no one believing anything, or everyone believing lies? If we fail to take immediate action to protect our news and information ecosystem we may soon reach the reality of no one believing anything. Therefore, I cannot stress how important it is in being active in demanding the truth and reading critically online. So what’s stopping you?

If you are interested more in his work and the organisation, check out this interview

P.S In the future world according to Google, people walking down the street with a smartphone will be reminded to turn right or buy milk when their internet fridge is empty. So before we lose the ability to think for ourselves let’s help out the media and help them be a true representation of the world we are living in.

 

 

Cecilia

Google, I thought you were my friend