Spot on Fake News

Fake news is stoned age news. So if you are wondering where or when fake news emanate from, you will be wasting my time for nothing in a discuss that have no end. This is year and in years to come from now we will be measuring if agenda 2030 is achieved or not. But to my mind there's big connect of the 17 SDGs to misinformation, disinformation and fake news.

I have once been misled to a wrong direction in a visiting city I didn't exactly know wheteabout to my final  destination. So I asked for direction from passengers we boarded train with who is, as  claimed are residents of the said city. So I trusted the information as accurate but landed in wrong destination, and worst still, was that the wrong destination exposed me to great security risk. I later got to know that the residents I requested information from, didn't in the real sense knew the exactness of the direction but directed me to a similar direction known to them. However, I was able to retraced my direction by fact checking the direction using digital Google map. But that misinformation cost me danger so much.

I mean real danger in the sense that I called a friend to narrate my experience to while I was far away in the visiting city. Then my friend cooked, fabricated a story and started sharing it on the social media about my experience and how I was robbed, maltreated and stranded out of racism which was not true. And he knew the storyline were untrue but still went ahead to share widely. Many of my family members and friends, public that read the story believed it without verifying it from me. The story triggered hates out of nothing and gave me work to do. I had to worked very had to convince my family/friends that the story was not true. It was disinformation.

You see, fake news to my mind is not really new in the world per se; it has always been there in news print- media and is placed close to where verified news print stands are in developed countries.  That's what I was made to know, hopefully you can confirm is not a fake news. But before that, one thing is always clear, that getting fake news is a matter  of choice in developed world but not in underdeveloped and developing world. 

That said, I know misinformation and disinformation are ingredients that can cook delicious meals of fake news knowingly or unknowingly, which do misshaped people's world views to the extent  that friends can turn into enemies in just no time. Believe me on this.

In a  world that is talking about zero hunger by 2030, it's baffling to see many fighting unnecessary conflict of wars leading to intense hunger. What role is misinformation and disinformation playing in all what we are seeing? I can tell you it have a part to play.

Very few are making money out of the war we fight, kill and destroy, then rebuild.. 

The rich get richer and the poor are getting poorer every day. So I ask,  why are wars usually fought in poor countries all over the world? And what have misinformation, disinformation got to do in all this?

  

 

THERE WE GO
Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, often with sensationalist, exaggerated, or patently false headlines that grab attention. Misinformation and disinformation are all ingredients of fake news.

It often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news stories to increase readership, online sharing and Internet click revenue. 

Bloggers seems to be on the go for this. But blogging fake news doesn't translate into responsible journalism not to talk of freedom of expression and that of the media. No, it doesn't.

Fake news undermines serious media coverage and makes it more difficult for journalists to cover significant news stories. Many people follow fake news seriously and claim that there is no smoke without fire. But that's ridiculous to my mind.

On the internet are many fake news websites opened for information, but not all information you see online are basic truth and facts. Social media is good but have not really helped issues around misinformation, disinformation and spread of fake news, rather it has helped to drive it. And will only minimize if we as users are becoming more responsible users, thtough education, sensitization and awareness as the master key.

Years back, I read how Facebook news feed has all been implicated in the spread of fake news which has come to provide competition for legitimate news stories. It is even unbecoming to the extent that if anybody want to get attention on the social media, you simply give out fake news and people sleepily follow and believe it.  

Every fake news online have more likes, retweet etc than verified news. Why do we like fake news?
 
Take for instance an anonymously-hosted fake news websites lacking known publishers having millions of followership, subscribers and readership, which is bane for economic viability through advertising values in terms of financial gains? Then you will know why publishers or bloggers, social media uses fake news and what ishe there for them. It's absolutely for traffic and traffic in online space translate into money. That's all. 

My real issues however are how some of the websites that advances fake news have successfully made it difficult for  prosecution for libel. There's need for such to serve as deterrent. And this calls for legal frameworks around it.

Alarming and disturbing is intertwine of fake news with freedom of speech. But like I said before, fake news is not part of freedom of expression or speech. It has no place in ethical and professional journalism any where in the world. If you know about counterfeit and fake products and how dangerous they are to humans? Fake news is worst than that. Just imagine it to yourself.

As I can recall sometimes in 2017, the inventor of the World Wide Web – Tim Berners-Lee claimed that fake news was one of the three most significant new disturbing Internet trends that must first be resolved, if the Internet is to be capable of truly "serving humanity." And I agreed with him totally. 

We must first of all look for constructive ways to curtail it, educate, educate and educate. Then start giving ourselves responsibility especially if you are a blogger like me roles to play. And the time to start that is now, as everybody can play part.

WHAT HOPE IS IN 
Internet as it is, has birthed people with characters that some just live on the social media to sow discord by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory pictures, posts and comments. Some comments you see are just off the messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion. These people interact with other like him/her and do often share misleading information that contributes to the fake news circulated on social media sites.
Social media sites and search engines have criticism for facilitating the spread of fake news. But hope is not lost, as social media platform owners/corporations have taken measures to explicitly prevent the spread of fake news; critics, however, believe more action is needed. 

For instance, after the 2016 American election and the run-up to the German election, Facebook began labeling and warning of inaccurate news and partnered with independent fact-checkers to label inaccurate news, warning readers before sharing it. 

After a story is flagged as disputed, it will be reviewed by the third-party fact-checkers. Then, if it has been proven to be a fake news story, the post cannot be turned into an ad or promoted. Another is the development of what is called “Artificial Intelligence”; one of the more recent technologies being developed in the United States and Europe to recognize and eliminate fake news through algorithms but if that will serve is topic for another day.  

@fakenews #fakenews