02 Mar 2017

Once upon a time, back before the internet was an everyday addiction, our ancestors used to buy newspapers so that they could read the news each day. The newspapers occasionally got things wrong and journalists were sometimes accused of being too opinionated, but there was always a team of people who were checking the facts. There was also an editor who made the final decision about what would and wouldn’t be published.

Then one day a dude called Mark Zuckerberg came along with a website called Facebook, and instead of reading newspapers, people started getting their news from the Facebook news feed.  Facebook had a team of people, similar to those who would run a newspaper, and they decided which news stories would be “trending”. Then, on August 26 last year, Facebook fired that team of people and gave their jobs to a team of engineers. The engineers set up an algorithm that could automatically spread whichever articles were the most popular on the internet that day. And that was about the time when things got really murky and we started to hear about “fake news”.

According to PolitiFact;

“Fake news is made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences…”

Basically, the term refers to deliberate lies that are presented as real news. And it’s amazing how often people believe these lies.

We live in a time where anyone can build a website and self-publish articles, so it’s probably not that surprising that some of these articles turn out to be completely false. Of course, most websites and individuals try to publish real news, but there are others out there who are in the business of publishing outlandish lies. And the problem with Facebook and its lack of editorial staff is that these kinds of manipulative stories aren’t fact-checked before they are able to gain lots of attention and start trending. If we’ve learned something from Facebook, it’s that the more shocking and unbelievable the lie, the more likely people are to like it and share it around on social media.

Here’s an example: On October 30 last year, a Twitter user called David Goldberg posted a screenshot from someone else’s Facebook page alleging that Hillary Clinton, who was then running for president, was involved in “an international child enslavement and sex ring”. The post gained a lot of traction online, despite the fact that no evidence has ever surfaced to prove the allegations.

As the story evolved, some bizarre connections were made to a Washington pizza shop called Comet Ping Pong. Then, in early December 2016, a man named Edgar Maddison Welch allegedly stormed into the pizza shop and fired at least one shot, before being arrested by police.

In an article for Wired, Henri Gendreau concluded: “And so “fake news” evolves from a threat to democratic norms into a menace to public safety.” Fake news wasn’t just bullshit anymore, it was dangerous bullshit.

Since then, Donald Trump has basically used the term “fake news” to discredit any story that portrays him negatively. “You are fake news,” Trump told Jim Acosta of CNN at a press conference in December. The day before, CNN had reported the existence of a document that alleged he had ties with Russia. (It’s worth noting here that CNN hadn’t yet reported on the contents of the document, just its existence.) Trump later told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phoney, fake.”

He’s right that we are all threatened by fake news. The only problem is that Trump calls “fake news” on anything and everything he doesn’t like. So we’ve come to a point in human history where lies can be circulated more easily and widely than ever before. Now, more than ever, we have to take real consideration into what we read and what we believe. Because the algorithm that controls your Facebook newsfeed doesn’t discern between what’s factual and what’s not.

When Facebook won’t check the facts, we have to get better at spotting bullshit.