Fake News: the death of truth?

The script

Believe it or not: there used to be a time when people actually believed the news. Newspapers and journalists strived to give us unbiased, truthful information. Now we live in a time where “online” lies have become so convincing, it’s hard to separate reality from fiction.

Fake news is mixed into regular articles and opinions. Our information age seems to have turned into a misinformation age! Entire industries have emerged, like Troll factories spreading lies that benefit their wallets. Renowned media often reposts without fact checking. And even worse, politicians use misinformation to strengthen their own agenda, spreading lies to help their campaigns or labeling critics that oppose them as “fake news”.

Misleading public opinion isn’t new. Propaganda’s effectiveness has ensured that many regimes around the world still use it to this day. But what’s really creepy is fake news being mixed with psychologic profiling on a global scale. Your social media behavior, interactions and interests can used to create content that is made to trigger “people like you”. The subject doesn’t matter, as long as it triggers your emotions. Written articles, photos, and video’s, everything is being altered. So even if you are aware of fake news, you still can’t really trust your eyes.

So how are we going to survive this info-pocalips?! The European Union is debating whether or not they should create detection and monitoring systems that check information and prevent misinformation from getting published. A so called upload-filter. But isn’t that even worse than propaganda? A limitation on access to information and opinions? A threat to our democracy and freedom of speech? A better solutions must exist!

Since fake new destroys the credibility of social platforms, tech-giants announced to invest millions of dollars on improving their news credibility features.

Artificial Intelligence makes it possible to automatically offer multiple angles on any story or article. Showing information on the publisher so that readers will always have a “built in” credibility check. Blockchain technology could then be used to access and maintain this information network, making sure articles are not altered or biased.

Help to stop fake news from going viral. Think before you share! Need some help? Check our “fake news detection package” in the link above☝.