The phenomena of Fake News seems to consist of websites creating articles with little or no validity but that seem real and interesting enough to get people to click on them for the sole purpose of being exposed to advertisements. The problem with this is companies like Facebook and Google’s size and presence in our everyday lives. Because of this, many people get all of their news from one of these sources so they have no other knowledge on the subject except what they’re getting from the one source. For example if I saw an article on Facebook with a fabricated quote from Hillary Clinton, but I don’t look at any other articles on the matter, I have no way of knowing that that isn’t true. Therefore I think technology companies do have a responsibility to suppress fake news, especially because they know their size and strength and should be able to see how harmful mass amounts of fake news can be. Depending on the subject matter I think Fake News can be harmless, but with topics like the presidential election, Fake News exposed to billions of users can have a very dangerous effect. The ability to sway people’s opinions to the point of changing their vote based on fabricated news is a scary thought.
Given the possible ramifications I think it is justified for these private entities to censor information. I’m not sure how effective they will be however. The methods described in the article seem vague and the fake news outlets will no doubt be able to adapt to squeeze through the protections put in place. The flagging of links by scoping comments seems like a very surface level approach and with the volume of data on Facebook I don’t see it ending the problem.
Personally, I find out about a lot of news from social media like Facebook. The trending news posts that show up in the top right corner often catch my eye, especially if it is something important like a terrorist attack or impending severe weather. Usually I use this as my first stop though, I scan the headlines and if I see something that seems important I’ll google it. I didn’t realize that Google was as affected by Fake News as Facebook however. I tend to click on sites like CNN or The New York Times, which I generally trust. I took to heart the point mentioned in the Snowden article about using more than one source for news. By looking through multiple news sources, you are able to pick out the facts that are a common thread through all of them making them more likely to be valid. If you find something in only one source however and there are no posts that corroborate it, you should be more skeptical. I will definitely keep this in mind going forward because I think I have been naive thus far in taking news as true without questioning it. I think truth still stands a chance in this society because of this ability to look at aggregate information and compare. In addition, we have more recordings and ways of validating quotes and such today than we have ever had before. I think the rise of videos in the news rather than articles makes truth much more attainable.
Nora Garvin 