Social media still has a bit of a reputation as the Wild West of the communications world. So Facebook’s recent announcement that it would empower users to flag hoax news seemed like a step in the right direction. In a post on its blog Facebook said the new feature would help it police the proliferation of fake news making its way onto the platform. But like most things on Facebook, how you mark a post as fake is complicated:
First you go to the top-right corner of a post and select "I don’t like this post."
That brings up a window titled "Help Us Understand What's Happening."
Then you select "I think it shouldn't be on Facebook."
That brings up several choices including "It's a false news story."
If enough people flag a piece of content as a hoax Facebook’s algorithm will tag it as such and save the rest of us from wondering if it's real or not.
So this would all seem to be a good thing, right? As the Washington Post wondered: Did Facebook just kill the Web’s burgeoning fake-news industry? But what about abuse of this system? You need only look back to November to see how it could be abused. It happened when The New York Times was reporting on Florida State University football players seemingly getting preferential treatment when local police ticketed them. When the Times’ official Twitter account tweeted out a link to the story, according to a report in USA Today, the tweet was quickly marked as spam. The story says it is believed many FSU fans tagged the tweet as spam so that it would disappear from Twitter. Upon being contacted by Times staffers Twitter restored the tweet, but not before hundreds, if not thousands of users, had seen it marked as spam. So, could this happen on Facebook? Could hundreds or thousands of advocates for some cause mark a legitimate post as a hoax and have it flagged as such? Of course. How do Facebook, Twitter and other social networks fight this virtual whack-a-mole approach to dealing with hoaxes? They have to have humans at the controls. No algorithm on its own can solve this problem. So, what do you think? Will Facebook’s new ability to flag news items as fake be abused? Will it create other problems?
There are all kinds of posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media that seem too good to be true. Sadly some of them are just that … too good to be true. But how can you tell which are true before you reshare that content on your social networks? Tools to detect an Internet fake: Google: In a Google Search window put the title of the internet post or image or video or the key subject of the piece. If the only results that come back are for that one piece of content, chances are it is fake or at the very least not credible, because if it were credible it would be found in a lot of (credible) places on the web. Google link checking: Google makes it easy to see who else is linking to something on the web. To do this, type the word “link” into a Google Search window, follow it with a colon and the URL of the page you want to check. Doing this kind of search will show you if any credible sites are linking to the suspect page. To read more: See who links to your site, and how. Snopes is a well-known site that either validates or debunks urban legends, Internet rumors, e-mail forwards and other stories of unknown or questionable origin. Search for some keywords from a questionable site to see if Snopes has investigated. Hoax-Slayer is an Australia-based debunker of all manner of hoaxes that includes sections on Facebook hoaxes and internet scams. Common sense: Finally, and this may seem obvious, checking a few basic things will likely reveal hints about the legitimacy of a piece of web content.
Is it hosted on a reliable website? For example, a major news outlet, a university website or a ".gov" domain.
Does it quote known, reliable sources?
Check for misspellings – a lot of them probably means an non-credible site.
Is the site overwhelmed with advertisements? That might be a sign that the site is all about attracting the unwary just to show them ads.
Is the website selling something? Be especially skeptical of information about something on a website that is trying to sell you that something or an item related to it.
If a website asks you to login using your social media credentials, make sure you check the domain first and verify that it is legitimate.
A final word: When you want to believe something is true, that’s the time when you have to recognize that you’re susceptible to being tricked. It’s also the time to put on the skeptic’s hat and really check something out. And just for fun, here are a few of the more memorable hoaxes perpetrated on Facebook in the past year:
You can charge your iPhone by placing it in and running a microwave.
A large number of members of Congress have criminal records.
There has been a confirmed case of an Ebola victim rising from the dead in Africa
Liking the image of a sick child equates to one prayer for that child while sharing equates to 100 prayers.
Publishing a "Privacy Notice" on Facebook will stop anyone from using your images or posts on FB for anything else.
Do you know of other ways to check for scams? Please share in the Comments area.
So Facebook’s recent announcement that it would empower users to flag hoax news seemed like a step in the right direction.
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