If you DGAF about fake news, you should!

Meet Susie. Susie is a millennial. Susie doesn’t read the newspaper or watch TV. Susie gets to know all about “her world” (friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, gossip, college parties) from the apps on her smartphone, like Facebook, Whatsapp, Google, and Twitter. Susie believes what she sees. She also gets her information about “the world” (politics, climate change, poverty, economic development) from the same apps on her smartphone.

Unfortunately, Susie still believes what she sees. And here lies the problem.

Internet-based misinformation started with harmless chain messages that said one will lose a parent if one doesn’t forward the same to 10 people. A joke, basically. Unfortunately, democracy is actually dying because of the uncontrolled spread of fake news. Owing to the fact that social apps on smartphones have become the primary source of news for many, this problem has snowballed into a socio-political issue with far-reaching consequences. Hate crimes, lynchings, electoral outcomes of important elections—many have allegedly been attributed, in some way or the other, to this phenomenon.

The Internet is an inherently open platform. While news is fundamentally well-researched and one-to-many in nature, opinions expressed on the Internet, more often than not, are neither. It entails ill-founded opinions or false information, cloaked as news, spreading like wildfire on many-to-many social platforms. While seemingly innocuous, these have a strong power of word of mouth.

Then, there is large-scale, organised fake news. Untraceable identities and ambiguous regulatory frameworks provide miscreants a fertile ground to cultivate misinformation campaigns. The problem increases exponentially, when the “bait” given by organised miscreants is shared as opinion by the individuals. This hybrid of fake news—quoted and blended with opinion—is precariously perched on the thread that separates news from opinion. So “I think India has the best National Anthem” somehow becomes “I agree with UNESCO that India has the best National Anthem”.

The average smartphone user like Susie might not be not discerning enough, and blindly trusts whatever is posted by friends and family. Now, when Susie, and many others on Susie’s networks, share that item, many more believe what they see. This has a multiplier effect on the outreach and credibility of that particular piece of fake news.

It doesn’t end here. The idea of fake news gains political currency, and somehow, the perpetrators of fake news, get to protect themselves under the shield of fake news itself. Anything that goes against one, is discredited by him or her as fake news. This makes the whole situation a hot mess.

From a rights perspective, any attempts to curtail fake news, opinions and their hybrid (opinions based on fake news) with a heavy hand, can have dire consequences for free speech, and for constitutionalism. Whether it’s the proposed Honest Ads Bill in the US, or the week-long digital curfew in Sri Lanka, these initiatives significantly impact the netizenry. Further, these initiatives reek of ad-hocism and undemocratic-ness.

However, this menace cannot be ignored any further. Should Susie’s fundamental freedoms be a function of others’ irresponsible actions? No. But should someone be held accountable? Absolutely.

This brings us to the next question: should social media platforms, that are used as means to spread fake news, be blamed? This is where classic “third-party/intermediary liability” debate comes into play. Are platforms responsible for errants who use these platforms to spread fake news? The extent of their liability is a legal grey area. However, morally, it is incumbent upon the tech behemoths—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, commonly referred to as “GAFA”—to come up with technological solutions that are battling the monster that is Fake News. Here is what they are doing :

1. Google

The treatment of fake news earlier had been symptomatic. Reporting fake news on Google’s various platforms meant that it went back to human reviewers. But this did too little, too late.

Google has now launched the Google News Initiative, in order to bolster credible news. It has pledges $300 million over the next three years.

The search engine has extremely sophisticated algorithms, possibly based on a website’s quality score. It proposes to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to better diagnose and immunise itself against the disease that is fake news algorithmically. For example, recently, websites that were not credible have been prevented from showing up in search results on “Google News” when they hide their country of origin.

Google has also partnered with First Draft, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which fights mis- and disinformation through fieldwork, research and education. They have launched “Disinfo Labs”.

YouTube, Google’s video-sharing social platform, has been tackling hate speech and inappropriate content for a while. They plan to now address fake news using interface enhancements. Searchers will be provided context about search terms through text boxes/info cards on top of search results. YouTube aims to support journalism expertise and publishers on the platform. YouTube also started labelling videos by state-funded broadcasters. It works with academic institutions to help teens develop media literacy skills. So they’re addressing the demand and the supply side of the problem. Yet, the rising consumption of conspiracy videos, invariably found in the “trending” section, is yet to be effectively addressed.

Other than that, there are third-party extensions that can be installed on the Chrome to prompt you each time a website with lack of credibility is opened.

2. Apple

Apple’s business is relatively less social. Yet, Apple News has added a new section that will highlight curated stories by human editors. Essentially, Apple will use algorithms to pick, choose and examine many of the stories they post. Then they’ll have various people reading, choosing, and fact-checking articles. The human curators will find and recommend well-written, factually accurate articles for readers, and make sure they get highlighted in their feed.

While this approach might be qualitatively better, its scalability is debatable. Further, apprehensions about human bias are also pertinent.

3. Facebook

Facebook users in some countries can flag articles they think are false on purpose. These will then go to third-party fact checkers. Stories that have been rated false by at least one third-party fact-checker are placed lower in your News Feed, but not removed. This balances the need for freedom of speech with the need to fight fake news. Further, pages that show false content repeatedly will be subjected to disciplinary action.

The site also tried using a warning icon next to articles that fact checkers had evaluated as false. However, tests showed that only “entrenched deeply held beliefs”. They’re now trying to provide context, and also notify users when they share fake news

Facebook is also actively hiring and acquiring individuals and start-ups specialising in AI to tackle fake news. The company is working with members of the academia to understand the “role of social media in elections, as well as democracy more generally”.

In March, WhatsApp, a Facebook entity, recently piloted a “forwarded” tag for messages sent from a different chat. Instagram, another Facebook run platform, has “verified” accounts (with blue ticks). However, the problem of bots reigns supreme.

4. Amazon

Amazon’s primary business is e-commerce and retail, but it’s not immune from the germ that is falsehood. Amazon is flooded with fake reviews. Technologies adopted there, if proved successful, can be replicated to fight fake news. Legally speaking, Amazon has served people writing bogus reviews, setting the right tone to deter errants in the industry.

“Fake news” was named Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2017. The issue is so elemental to us, that it has social, political, economic and diplomatic underpinnings. An interesting, but unsettling, study conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in the journal Science shows that fake news spreads faster and wider than credible news.

So if you, like Susie, DGAF about fake news yet, you should!