Tuesday 25 July 2017

How fake is 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. 

Fake news is not really new in developed world per se; it has always been there in news print- media and is placed close to where verified news print stands are. That is what I was made to know and is not a fake news. But before that, one thing is always clear, that getting fake news is a matter  of choice, just choices especially fake ones can misshaped so many world views to the extent  that friends can turn into enemies in just no time. 

The world is talking about zero hunger, so many people are fighting unnecessary wars leading to intense hunger, while only few are making money out of the war we fight. The rich are getting richer everyday and the poor are getting poorer every day. So I ask the other day why is it that wars are fought in poor countries all over the world? That too is no fake news you know!
File:How to Spot Fake News.pdf  
 
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.  Fake news often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news stories to increase readership, online sharing and Internet click revenue. Fake news also 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.

On the internet, are many fake news websites and I see social media helping to drive it. The other day, 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. 
 
Anonymously-hosted fake news websites lacking known publishers have also been credited, because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for libel. More alarming and disturbing is intertwine of fake news with freedom of speech.But no, that is not correct. You see, fake news is fake. And I wonder asking you if fake news is freedom of expression or speech? Then I recalled sometimes this year (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. It must be curtailed and the right time  to do that is now. So I have a role to play, so I ask you again what can you do to help.

WHAT HOPE IS IN IT
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. I say that is it.
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” is 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