Can Technology Save Us?

Technology of Fake News

Fake news sites target the filter bubbles of groups most aligned with that news. They use the power of social media to do so. Initially fake news of the social media era was relatively easy to spot. The claims of early social media fake news purveyors were often meant as entertainment. Language, fonts, and links were often indicators that could be used to determine veracity. It took only a short time for fake news to become more insidious, more plentiful, more subtle, and subverted for manipulation of information and public opinion. Fake news has many new social media outlets where it can appear and can spread quickly via both human and nonhuman actors. During the 2016 presidential election cycle for example, fake news appeared often.1 Determining what news was to be believed and what news was to be ignored became more a case of party affiliation than good sense.

Fake news sites and stories are shared for many different reasons. Some readers find the stories amusing. Some find them alarming. Others find them affirming of their beliefs. Many people share fake news without ever having read the content of the article.2 Sharing of fake news, whether because it is amusing or because people think it is real, only exaggerates the problem. Did Pope Francis endorse candidate Donald Trump? No, but that didn't stop the story from appearing on social media and spreading widely.3 Did Hillary Clinton run a child sex ring out of a Washington, DC, pizza shop? No, but that didn't stop a man with a gun from going there to exact vengeance.4

In the early days of the internet, fake news was not a big problem. There were some websites that sought to spoof, mislead, or hoax, but mostly it was all in good fun. While some websites sought to spread misinformation, their numbers were limited. It seemed as if the authority to shut down malicious websites was invoked more often. Creating a website on the early internet took time, effort, and computer programming skills that limited the number of people who could create fake news sites.

During the last decade, as an offshoot of the stream of information provided by the internet, social media platforms, such as Facebook...