The take over of fake news
As the use of social media rises, the history of fact checking decreases. People have formed an over reliance on quick easy access news rather than a well research and reputable source. I believe that there are outlying problems of people going for fake news but that there is also solutions every person can do to avoid falling for it.
In the first article I researched I found the word that I feel best sums up how social media runs and one of its core problems, information overload. The article captures the idea that when people go on Facebook or other apps they see so much information on any given topic, that they result to trusting shares from people they know. However the article goes on to explain that while this is buying into fake news it often does happen due to evolutionary history.
“These biases are products of our evolutionary past, and for tens of thousands of years, they served us well. People who behaved in accordance with them — for example, by staying away from the overgrown pond bank where someone said there was a viper — were more likely to survive than those who did not.”
As the quote shows, humans at their core are trusting and expect to find answers and safety in blindly trusting those they know. In turn if that person were to post an article say Covid was created by a corporation then there close friends would give it more interest than a story shared by a stranger.
In addition to the how people fall for fake news Scientific Americans story does an excellent job in showing how it comes to getting featured. As explained in the chart below people often don’t muck through all of their feed but rather what's closer to the top meaning that if one person sees one post its likely others did as well and shared it out of convivence. So forth goes the chain of sharing not what makes the most sense but what's the most accessible.
Now when it comes to fake news site unbelievably people can be very gullible, even falling for news from satirical sites such as The Onion. However not all sites are as funny as the onion and many make up stories just to support their own agenda such as The Boston Tribune which has posted several hoaxes with no basis or facts. Thankfully as people catch on to hoaxes many of these sites have received negative attention and shut down but many remain like the Tribune.
Whether it be information overload or people seeing what is at the top of their pages there are simple solutions to avoid fake news. University of West Florida's site does a great job listing tips including steps such as checking dates to see if timelines match, checking for bias in the story itself and the sources the story use. By doing all of this and double checking any news read online people can ensure they don’t fall into the clutches of fake news.
At the end of the day I don’t feel like people are doomed to falling for fake news forever and that the future is all gloom and doom. In an interesting article from Ericsson.com they outline the possible future of news being told using AR and VR technology. Being able to physically see into the scene of a news story or watch many events live with the ability of looking around would ensure that people can experience a story in depth and form their own opinions from what was witnessed.
In conclusion, fake news is a problem plaguing the country right now and as our amount of social media grows so will the problem. That is however until solutions are found and listened to. It is hard to say what the future holds in store but as technology grows with media I feel that it will be harder to get away with fabricating fake news in a heavily monitored online society.
