Fake news today can literally be found anywhere
throughout the internet. On any page on Facebook or Twitter most of the time
the user can find fake news. It’s becoming such a big problem with many people believing
it.
Social media like Facebook is trying to help put an end to
this. On a Facebook post, posted by CEO and cofounder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, he said that they take misinformation seriously and that they are trying to
better their technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before
they do it themselves. Facebook is launching
a resource to help you spot fake news and misleading information that spreads throughout
its service.
But apart from Facebook and other social medias trying to combat fake news people are only going to find different ways to produce it in a way that makes it harder to spot if it's fake. The future of fake news could even get a lot scarier once people start manipulating audio and video. On the video shown below you can see how a simple webcam can help produce a video to be manipulated and with doing that this can be a powerful weapon to create even more believable fake news.
Adobe, an American multinational computer software company, especially known for their programs like, Photoshop and After Effects have shown a program nicknamed "Photoshop for audio." Nick
Bilton, a writer for vanity fair says, "The product allows users to feed ten to 20 minutes of someone's voice into the application and then allows them to type words that are expressed in that exact voice.
The more people get their hands on programs that allow them to manipulate such things the harder it'll be to stop fake news from spreading and the easier that people will fall victims to it.
Many people are making money from spreading fake news. Scott Shane, from The New York Times, wrote an article about a 23 year old named Cameron Harris and how he made $1000 from people clicking his website and reading fake news that he produced.
It's such a scary thing to think but many people have created a job for themselves through the spread of fake news.
But apart from Facebook and other social medias trying to combat fake news people are only going to find different ways to produce it in a way that makes it harder to spot if it's fake. The future of fake news could even get a lot scarier once people start manipulating audio and video. On the video shown below you can see how a simple webcam can help produce a video to be manipulated and with doing that this can be a powerful weapon to create even more believable fake news.
Adobe, an American multinational computer software company, especially known for their programs like, Photoshop and After Effects have shown a program nicknamed "Photoshop for audio." Nick
Bilton, a writer for vanity fair says, "The product allows users to feed ten to 20 minutes of someone's voice into the application and then allows them to type words that are expressed in that exact voice.
The more people get their hands on programs that allow them to manipulate such things the harder it'll be to stop fake news from spreading and the easier that people will fall victims to it.
Many people are making money from spreading fake news. Scott Shane, from The New York Times, wrote an article about a 23 year old named Cameron Harris and how he made $1000 from people clicking his website and reading fake news that he produced.
It's such a scary thing to think but many people have created a job for themselves through the spread of fake news.
Fake news will never end and will only become more difficult to put an end to or even to spot, but it can be avoided. There are
many actions being taken to help the spread of fake news, but the best thing
anybody can do is to take the right steps and research what they are reading to
see whether it is real or not.
Hey Ruben,
ReplyDeleteNice blog post. Its crazy to me that Facebook is finally going to do something about the fake news that is being posted. I know you mentioned some ways for people to avoid it but in reality, how many people do you actually think will read the " about us " part of the website? I think the main reason why so many people get hooked on reading news online, fake or real, is the way they advertise it, such as using capital letters and explantation points! its hard to miss that when you are scrolling through the newsfeed on your Facebook timeline. I think it will take years for people to avoid fake news and understand the difference between fake and real.