The Battle Against Fake News Is Just Getting Started

While “fake news” is now a commonly used term, those of us in the technology security industry have called this type of misinformation—the kind designed to deceive—by many other names, such as hoaxes, clickbait, scams or, more recently, cyber-propaganda. These false stories are harder to recognize and prevent, despite the many efforts underway to cut off the fuel that has allowed fake news to permeate our society. As an advocate for online safety for almost a decade—and, more important, as a mom of two school-aged kids—I recognize that this is an incredibly huge problem for all of us, but especially for children, who rely more on the internet than any previous generation. If fake news continues to litter the internet, the risk of kids being fooled is the highest. The battle has just begun There are many facets to the fake news ecosystem, from creators, to distributors, to consumers, to the advertising and channels that support it. I applaud those who are standing up to disrupt the cycle: the journalists, advertisers and others using this moment for self-reflection and action, asking, “How did we get to this point and what do we do now?” The technology industry, too, has a role in this battle. While the spread of misinformation predates the internet, mass communication is now indistinguishably linked to online channels, and information can persist and reach larger audiences by way of websites, online ads, social media and search-engine results. Thankfully, many are taking up arms. Google, Facebook and Snapchat have made some changes to their services and/or undertaken initiatives to stem the flow of fake news on their platforms. This is great (and true) news, as these are the places so many people are finding and sharing information. Here are some of other ways the technology industry is taking action: Starving bogus sites: Facebook and Google have chosen to financially cut off sites that host/promote fake news in any way. Google won’t allow any such sites to advertise on its platform, and both companies now prohibit their ads to be displayed on those sites. Cutting off financial support makes it difficult for those harmful sites to survive—a good and meaningful step. Snapchat has taken a proactive approach by allowing only trusted news sources to be featured in its Discover section. It’s taking on the burden of making its platform a trustworthy place instead of passing that buck onto users and publishers. However, like all social applications, it does nothing to prevent people from sharing information with each other on the platform, whether true or not. Rating the accuracy of information: Google and Facebook are now also working with outside groups to qualify information and its veracity on their platforms. Facebook has developed a “disputed content” alert, which informs a user that what they are reading or about to share may in fact not be true. Google has a fact-check tag that is displayed in its search engine results for information that may be questionable. This is incredibly empowering for users, much like age ratings are for movies and books. Giving people the power: Facebook is giving community members a tool to flag news that they think is fake—similar to the way social networks allows you to report abusive content. The downside is that, like abusive content, social networks are flooded with these kinds of reports and therefore can’t respond quickly. Additionally, as I’ve personally experienced, people may report news simply because they don’t agree with it, not because it is false. Educating the public: This is probably the toughest one to execute but the most significant one. Engaging and supporting initiatives to help the public become more critical consumers of information online has never been more paramount than this moment. To this end, Facebook launched the Facebook Journalism Project and the News Integrity Initiative, which include collaborating with journalists to determine how they can distribute news in the most responsible, meaningful ways for the 2 billion people they serve, and supporting news literacy education so that people can learn to be critical consumers of news. Of the major social networks and technology platforms, Facebook currently stands alone in this endeavor. What else can we do? Major technology companies are acknowledging that false information can and will destroy the trust on which the internet depends on to thrive, and that a misinformed society is harmful to us all. These powerful companies are working to influence masses of people in a positive way on this issue, but is it enough? Most online services are designed to make it easy to do things, including finding and sharing information—usually with the tap of our thumb. But what if we introduced more friction into the process? Many advocate for frictionless sharing, but I think we need to reverse that thinking. What if we had to take an extra step before sharing, posting or liking, much like we are prompted before we irrevocably delete something in our inbox? Would it encourage us to question what we’re doing online before we do it? Although it might be irritating at first, it would encourage people to take a minute and think, potentially slowing the spread of false information. Another way to help stop fake news would be for all online content—from tweets to blogs to videos—to be instantaneously analyzed and categorized the moment it goes live. Having a rating system like this could easily help people determine what to trust (or not) online. Or what if there was a higher bar everyone had to clear before posting anything online? What if you needed to pass a test before you could post anything online? What if you had to pay every time you shared something? While these ideas may technically be feasible, they are not easy to accomplish and would certainly face a lot of resistance, with good reason. Therefore, the best defense for anyone against bogus information online is to use the right technology coupled with good judgment. Beyond 1s and 0s All of the ways in which the technology industry is helping to solve the issue of false news are admirable and worthwhile, but technology alone cannot do the job. There needs to be an equal or greater effort to help the public—specifically kids—learn how to critique what they see so they can make more informed decisions. Stopping the source is a difficult but important cause, but giving kids the skills to critique, ignore, refute or even debunk it is equally so. Perhaps we will never stop 100 percent of fake news, but we can work to shrink the audience that buys it. This is why we’ve made it our mission to make education a central piece of our strategy to help young people be safe, responsible and successful online. As the internet has grown, changed and reached every corner of the planet, we have seen changes in technology sometimes outpace the ability for people, particularly kids, to keep up with it. We’ve seen kids flock to new social networking apps and become skilled at using them, but they are often unaware of their power—over their personal information, privacy and life. Helping them, and their parents and teachers, bridge that knowledge gap is one of the most important jobs we have today. Fake news, or whatever you choose to call it, is the latest risk to kids and all of us online. Like pollution and litter, it is clogging up the air, risking the long-term health of the internet, and anyone who has the power to do something should. Lynette T. Owens is the founder and global director of Trend Micro’s Internet Safety for Kids and Families program. After many years in technology marketing roles and serving as associate vice president of corporate marketing for Trend Micro, Owens founded the ISKF program in 2008 to help deliver on the company’s vision of making a world safe for the exchange of digital information. Image courtesy of Cn0ra/iStock.