Fake News

Facebook has come under a lot of fire in the wake of the US election for the abundance of fake news that circulated on the social network.  CEO Mark Zuckerberg originally defended the organisation's lack of action against the issue by basically saying "it's not an issue" - something he quickly learned was the wrong thing to do when it comes to investors and their perceptions of the company.  Some news outlets went so far as to declare that Mark Zuckerberg is now a politician whether he likes it or not, he may not hold any public office but he holds the profile and influence associated with many that do and as such garners the same level of scrutiny.

When it comes to news online there are basically three types of fake news.  The first is satire, which is purveryed by the likes of the Onion.  In this case the websites produce news stories that are not intended to be true but the sites themselves make that somewhat ambiguous to first visitors, instead keeping the disclaimer elsewhere on the site.  This form of news while sometimes misleading isn't a prevailing problem.  Those news outlets that carry "real" news stories are for the most part aware of satirical sites such as this and don't use them as sources.

The second type of fake news online is the far-fetched news sites, these also form a type of satire, but in this case the stories reported are meant to be so far fetched it should be obvious immediately that they are hyperbole.  These are harder to pin down to individual sites as they often exist on third party sites, content management systems like Blogger and Wordpress rather than websites dedicated to them.  These stories, while also misleading, aren't a real concern either to mainstream media and reputable news outlets.  Anyone with an ounce of sense can see these stories aren't serious.

The third type is the hardest to identify and pose the most difficult to tackle - news knowingly false when written.  You can interpret this in many ways, some would call it propaganda, but often times it doesn't conform to an overall narrative.  This type of news is primarily written as click bait, intended to increase page impressions either for the purpose of marketing a website or to make money through cost-per-impression ad services.  These news stories are knowingly false when they are written.  From celebrity rumours which were completely made up on the spot by the writer, to stories that 'could be true' but have absolutely no evidence to support any of the claims.

This fake news is something that is hard to identify because it's not just restricted to obscure websites, it has arguably been used by many mainstream news outlets as well.  Some major news outlets with a reputation of writing headlines obsequious to extremist views have used sensationalist claims for all manner of things.  These outlets are well versed in the legality of their productions and know the fine line they can walk between what they can say without being held to account - or as some even go the lengths to writing articles entirely false with the intention of later writing minor feature retractions at a later date which 99% of their readers will overlook. 

There are also ways to write articles entirely false and hide the fact.  Protection of Sources in journalism is a concept many western countries share and provide strong legal precedents for; these protections allow news outlets to refuse to name sources of information passed to them, to that end it is possible to write a story that cites a "source" close to the matter and refuse to name that source; it's very hard to prove that the source didn't exist and the entire story was made up in the first place.

In a world dominated now by online media it is easier than ever to mislead, to produce rhetoric and hyperbole masquerading as journalism.  The moniker of Investigative Journalism is stolen by many as an excuse to dismiss the lack of coverage of a story beyond their own networks, and ultimately the major danger with online news is virality.  There have been a number of cases where fake news stories have made it into the mainstream media and carried as news reported as true simply because the original stories went viral and each news site along the way jumped on the band wagon resulting in minor yet credible news sites carrying a story which snowballs until major news sites also carry the same story.

Some people will argue it's all fun and games and people shouldn't take it seriously.  The problem is there are people that do take it seriously, not the problem of fake news, but the stories they actually carry.  "Common Sense" has been dead for a very long time.  We live in the era of the idiot.  People are gullible and while you may count yourself as one of those who still has common sense and that you would never be fooled by such stories, the problem is when those stories filter out and into mainstream media, like a Chinese whisper the rough corners are sanded off and glimmering threads of truth are woven into the stories until you reach a point where credible sources are used to back up claims that are anything but, yet when you read those claims you are lulled into a false sense of security. 

I've covered this before in a previous post on the depth of reasoning most people have.  How deep do you question what you learn?  Most people abandon the infinite depth of reasoning of a child who repeatedly asks "why" to each answer until the respondent can go no deeper.  Most people exist in a state where the deepest they go is 1 at most 2 levels before abandoning their pursuit.  Take the device you are using right now to read this post and ask yourself successive questions and see how deep you can go before you can't answer, for example:

How are you accessing this site?
How is that device receiving the data?
How is that data transmitted?
How is that transmission powered?
How is that power generated?
How does that generation work?
How did the fuel get to that generator?
How was that fuel harvested?
How did that fuel get there in the first place?
How did people figure out that fuel could be used to generate power?
How did people discover power?
How is that power used by your device?
How is your device built?
How does each component work?
How is each component built?

This process is simply meant to highlight the fact that we use abstraction day to day to live our lives, we don't question deeper than we have to in order to get by and the same goes for all we see and do, and read.  We only question it to a certain depth.  We read a news story and at best we ask where the information came from, or how that information was collected.  We don't question beyond those levels because it takes time and effort which we'd rather devote to other things.