Cascading Out of Control
Ever since the US Presidential election, social media has been in the news for many of the wrong reasons. Facebook has been criticized multiple times for allowing multiple accounts to spread data that has not been fact-checked and thereby acting as a medium by which these people can easily influence the voting patterns of many groups.
Of course, information cascades of incorrect facts are nothing new on social media. In the link attached below, a quote by Marthin Luther King Jr. was used in a user’s Facebook post:
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” MLK Jr.
The quote itself is indeed accurate and was said by King in a 1957 sermon. However, after multiple reposts, it was found that the present quotations marks were stripped and applied to the entire post instead, including the first line, which was never actually King’s. What makes it worse is that this quote was then posted on Twitter, but because of its 140-character limit, only the first line of the modified quote appeared. In essence, in a very short span of time, millions of people were made to believe that this new quote was Kings, which is definitely not the case.
This example illustrates just how easy social media’s connectedness and easy sharing functionalities allow fake news to spread, wherein people are convinced that what they are reading is indeed true because so many other people have said so, despite having information generally that indicates otherwise, ie: an information cascade.
How then do we, as a society stem the spread of such mis-information? Well, knowing the fundamentals of information cascades and how they form, one solution would be to stop misinformation at its roots. Accounts that are spreading fake information could possibly be made less visible to others on the network. Of course, there are challenges here, especially since there are sometimes grey lines between what is a fact and what is an opinion.
A more interesting solution to try is to allow users to flag incorrect content. Not everyone who comes across a post that is factually incorrect is inclined to believe what they read. But often these users don’t say anything. This could be due to their reluctance to be embroiled in a debate or irk their friends, but either way their voice is not heard. In effect, if Facebook allowed users to somehow anonymously voice these concerns, there would be a way of overcoming the asymmetry of information that makes it seem like most users believe this fake information. Once again, this too suffers from the common inability to differentiate facts and opinions but could really be a good way forward in ensuring that we as a society take more time to think about content and prevent false information spiraling (or cascading) out of control.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13787750/walt-mossberg-facebook-fake-news