Fake news spread among people on social media platforms in large quantities and at high speed. The ease of sharing anything by any account on these platforms and its reach to a very large audience, led to the spread of false ideas and beliefs in a large number. Perhaps the most recent example is the false news that spread during the Corona virus epidemic crisis, which caused unnecessary terror among people, so we saw the stampede that occurred to buy medical materials such as masks and sterilizers excessively, which led to their loss from the market; This negatively affected the medical workers, as they urgently need it. Also, social media platforms have recently faced a massive torrent of fake news targeting the upcoming US elections, which previously affected the 2016 elections.
Why do people believe fake news?
Our attraction to misinformation is not really surprising. Our minds like to believe things that are true to our beliefs, even if they are false. In addition, we believe the news that we see a large number of people who have shared it, because the large number of news sharing creates an illusory feeling of confirmation of the news.
Scientists say that there are types of viruses that weaken a person's immunity against them when exposed to numerous and repeated attacks. This is exactly what happens while browsing social media, when constantly seeing the same false news, the brain tends to accept it even if it is counterintuitive.
The elderly, teens, and people without a high education are the most vulnerable to being affected by fake news spreading online. These groups tend to accept deceptive stories because they basically link them with their false theories, which creates a strong sense of credibility for those stories, and thus repost them online.
Ways to spread fake news
The social media algorithm for showing posts when browsing depends on the number of likes and votes. In addition to the posts of the pages and the people we follow, we will also see posts on which there is great interaction.
These votes and likes can be easily fake by using electronic flies; Electronic flies are a term that expresses automated accounts managed by computers that are programmed to target specific posts in order to increase interaction on them and thus spread them quickly. Many entities invest in electronic flies to spread false news that serves the interest of these parties. But usually, automated accounts can be easily exposed due to the lack of old posts in them.
The US election war in the digital space
With the US elections approaching, fake news has started to spread massively on the major social media platforms in the USA. This forced the administrations of these platforms to launch a major war targeting any kind of false news, even if it came from US President Donald Trump himself; Incidentally, this has happened several times, as some of Trump's posts have been marked as fake news.
Facebook recently announced a ban on US advertising company Rally Forge, which was found to be carrying out misleading campaigns targeting false news on the Facebook platform about US election candidate Joe Biden.
Twitter announced a set of updates to the platform in proactive steps aimed at reducing the impact of fake news on the platform. Twitter announced that it will not be allowed to announce the victory of a candidate in the US elections before the official announcement by the official authorities. Also, fake news warnings will appear when browsing election-related tweets to raise awareness.
The European Union joins the war against fake news
During the last European Union parliamentary elections, the second largest democratic election in the world. Russia launched a massive campaign of fake news aimed at spreading disinformation on social media. The European Union announced the emergence of 600 pages and a Facebook group days before the start of the European Parliament elections. These groups and pages alone generated nearly 763 million views of the fake news and hate speech that they post.
Although Facebook, Twitter and Google signed in 2018 a "Code of Practice on Disinformation" with the European Union, which aims to combat fake news, the effort that has been made is far from enough, according to officials' statements. The European Union has also stated that companies have made progress in some of their efforts to combat fake news, such as hiring teams to verify information and tightening restrictions on political ads. But European officials added that they expect the companies to scale up their efforts to fight fake news.
How to protect yourself from false news?
Detecting fake news is often easy to investigate. To begin with, of course, you should verify the source of the news, and if it turns out to be a liar, do not re-post it on your social media accounts. And try to follow more reliable accounts and stay away from any other accounts in obtaining information.
And use social media more responsibly, by immediately reporting posts or accounts that contain incorrect information, and among the reporting options, choose "misleading information." The communication platforms already offer many options to the user in order to prevent the spread of fake news and reduce its visibility on the personal account.
What does the future hold for fake news?
The beneficiaries of this false news are seeking to develop other means to spread deception over the Internet, such as the use of artificial intelligence, which will allow hackers to create semi-real accounts that do not differ from accounts owned by humans and spread false news through them. Not only that, but artificial intelligence is able to produce completely fake multimedia such as deep fake video - a technology based on creating videos that look completely real but fake - that can deceive people more easily, and are difficult to detect.
Therefore, we must evolve further to be prepared to face future cyber fly attacks. Likewise, we must develop artificial intelligence algorithms to verify fake news and spread the truth. Also, people should be encouraged to search for themselves the source of anything they see on social media platforms.
Fake news will certainly not disappear from our lives, but we must always work to fight it, and expand research to understand the mechanism of its spread through social media platforms. And to create the necessary tools to fight them, so that we can limit them and reduce their harm in the future.
You are right....fake news spread increase day by day