Information Cascades and Fake News: Solutions to This Problem
Ever since the rise of the Internet, the spread of fake news has become inevitable. We can attribute this to information cascades. Often times, the situation goes like this: someone will see an article on an unreliable news source, say Buzzfeed. Following the BBC article linked below, suppose that the subject of the fake article was that the Pope endorsed Trump in the 2016 election. The person who reads this notify someone else, who will read the article and tell someone else. However, after a while, the news will not be spreading by source of the article, but rather it will be by word of mouth and no one will even bother to check the accuracy of the information. This is why information cascades often spread false information.
This BBC article attempts to find a way to combat the spread of fake news. Information cascades are so powerful, so there is no definite solution yet. One solution would be to “flag” these fake articles so that before the information inevitably cascades to a large number of people, people will realize that the information is inaccurate. Additionally, another solution, the more interesting solution, in my opinion, would be to program algorithms to learn how to spot fake news or fake news sources, similar to how an email inbox can detect spam. Companies like Google and Facebook are working on creating these algorithms, however, it is very complex to create since correctly spotting fake news has no specific methodology but instead must require human experience and knowledge.
Using our knowledge of information cascades, we know that if people can know the news is false before the beginning of the cascade, in the early stages, the cascade will not occur. Flagging websites is a great way to do this, however, it isn’t a definite solution. An algorithm is in the works, but in the meanwhile, we can encourage people to fact check before sharing information to prevent the start of false news information cascades.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-38769996