Saturday, October 31, 2015

Misinformation on social media

We live in an age where more than 1 in 7 people use social media. People share everything from how often they go to McDonald's to new ideas on how to improve the world. Social media has become an integral part of our lives and its widespread use has increased the speed at which information is spread. People are quick to share any news they see on their Facebook page and tweet about anything they heard that sound interesting. However part of all the information that is shared and spread, is misinformation.
It has now become so easy to spread rumors and lies online that it has become cumbersome to filter out the truth from the hoard of information presented on social media. The fundamental problem is that in general people do not fact check what they read online. The assume it to be true and shear it, becoming an accessory to misinformation. The misinformation could be in the form of an article, a picture, or worst of all, someones personal opinion. To give an example, recently in Saudi Arabia there was a stampede that killed over 700 people during the Hajj (Islamic annual ritual). When people first heard about this they immediately began speculating as to whose fault it was. They blamed everyone from the Saudi government to a recently deceased prince's funeral procession. Famous people posted about this on their Facebook pages and didn't even bother to determine what actually happened, they just sort of blamed who they thought was most likely to be guilty. When people read these statuses (such as "Saudi's bad management led to the death of 700 people"), they immediately assumed that the Saudi's were to blame and shared the status. This cycle continued until an entire narrative based on prejudice and pre-disposed opinions was shared by a lot of people. Another example pertaining to the same incident is when a picture surfaced on facebook of the Saudi government using bulldozers to clear out the dead bodies. People were immediately infuriated and didn't even stop to consider whether or not this picture was legitimate or not. Later on someone proved online that picture was a photo shopped version of another picture and was posted by someone who hated Saudi Arabia.
The fault in both examples lies within the community of people who started such posts without researching and the people who spread them without fact checking the information. So essentially human nature. People should be more careful about what they share and post, as opinions can be confused for facts easily today since Photoshop and such softwares can make lies look very convincing.
This begs the question as to whether mankind deserves such high speed information sharing. Yes on one hand it does help communicate great ideas and people can learn new things very quickly. However on the other hand people can also spread lies just as quickly and someones reputation can be scarred in a matter of hours and repairing it takes much more effort. Maybe there should be some sort of regulation? My opinion is to educate people about the importance of fact checking what they share and if they cannot prove it, then leave it and not spread it. 

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